Recently in Work Category

Regular readers will have noticed that in recent months, Feministing has brought in a number of new contributors: Ariel, Jos, Lori, Rose and myself. No doubt you're getting to know them by reading their posts and engaging with their ideas in the comments section, but I also suspect that you might want to know a little more about these wonderful women (I know I do!). Over the last few weeks, I've been interviewing my fellow new contributors so that you and I can get to know them a little better. This week, last but not least, I interviewed Rose Afriyie.

Rose is a first generation Ghanaian American who grew up in the Bronx and the Poconos. She got her B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh and is now at the University of Michigan pursuing her Masters in Public Policy, focusing on Science, Technology and Public Policy. Rose is particularly interested in sexuality and in how racial and gender inequities affect access to technology and, in turn, in participation in civic life. She has worked as an organizer with NOW and before she joined the Feministing crew this September, her writing was published in The Chicago Tribune and in her college paper, where she was a sex columnist, which officially makes her the coolest older sister ever (she's one of five siblings).

And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Rose Afriyie.

Today is Equal Pay Day in the United Kingdom. The pay gap there, for full-time workers, is 17.1%. Meaning women make on average 17% less than men make.

This website has some interesting graphics that breakdown the details of the pay gap for two different cities in the UK, where the pay gap is actually reversed in the city with lower income overall.

More information here.

One of our awesome readers, Jason, was doing some research and came across this seemingly innocuous business article by The Iona Group, a company that purports to have worked with the Gap, Williams Sonoma, and Sharper Image among other major companies.

Well guess what advice The Iona Group has for women?:

FOR WOMEN ONLY
1. I watch my hemlines, necklines, and see-through blouses. I leave the sex appeal and liberation manifesto... in the parking lot.
6. I watch my condescending "more liberated than thou" attitude.
7. I don't like, but can accept the hard reality, that a woman may need to prove herself beyond that of a man in a similar position.

Shit. My "sex appeal" is so large that it doesn't fit in my car. What do I do with that, um, "hard reality"? And while we're on the subject, my "liberation manifesto" is rather assuming and valuable. Won't it get stolen if I just leave it lying around?

Feel free to email Earl T. Benson, the Independent Director of Iona, with your questions and/or thoughts: iona@tiac.net.

My childhood friend Mollie sent me not one, but two copies of her former professor's book, when she noticed that I was thinking and writing a lot about work/family balance issues (thanks Mollie!). Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have it All by Sharing it All by Joanna Strober and Sharon Meers is a deeply-researched, very practical guide to getting real about some of the most critical unfinished business of contemporary feminism.

Unlike Linda Hirshman's Get to Work, which leaves many readers feeling judged and misunderstood, or Leslie Bennett's The Feminine Mistake, which leaves many readers thinking doomsday thoughts, Strober and Meers approach the subject with healthy doses of both realism and optimism. They are women who have been through it, and lived to tell the tale. (Both are heterosexual, and so their own life examples are from this perspective. Unfortunately they didn't do much to look at non-hetero couples or non-marrying types).

After reviewing all the research that proves that dual working families are actually healthier, happier, and more economically viable, they go on to talk about some of the roadblocks to making it work and their suggestions for getting past those roadblocks.

One of the insights that really struck a personal chord was that women have to truly let go of the notion that they are inherently more fit to parent, that they can simply do it better, by virtue of being women.

Lisa Belkin revives it:

Women have gained this latest bit of ground mostly because men have lost it -- 78 percent of the jobs lost during this recession were held by men. So not only is it unseemly to rejoice over a larger share of a smaller pie, it is also unsettling to face the fact that so much of the history of women in the workplace (both their leaps forward and their slips back) is a reaction to what was happening to men.

But why must we belabor these issues--economic decline, job loss--through a sex/gender dichotomy? He suffers vs. she gains is not the most compelling lens within which we can understand the current economic crisis or changing culture in the American workforce. Nor is it the most nuanced. In many ways, it feels like a large distraction from some of the more pressing issues that this economic moment presents: corporate conglomeration, class disparity, wealth accumulation and preservation, the lack of state and federal safety nets for the average American etc. etc.

There's some heavy analysis and powerful argumentation to be made. Instead we're raining all over the small and humble parade by feminists excited that women's participation in the workforce is nearing 50%. Ugh.

Women are now half of the American workforce. Officially.

You may not be surprised, but consider all of the implications. How does being a true equal in the professional world change the way we raise families, get treated in the media, spend money, vote, relate to men and one another, play, exercise, and worship? How does it change the way the next generation sees their own potential, both professionally and personally?

These are some of the questions that Maria Shriver, along with the Center for American Progress, the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and a crew of public intellectuals are exploring in a report to launch October 19 called "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything." I wrote one of two conclusions--an attempt to summarize much of what the report argues and point towards a more equal, fulfilling future for both women and men. I was so honored to be asked!

The Center for American Progress explains that the report will "combine the work of economists and academics to address the consequences of women's more prominent economic status in the institutions that matter most in American life, including government, business, faith, education, and health. The report will also include data from research and on-the-ground reporting around the country, looking especially at the interplay between women and men in our society today."

NBC news is planning to include coverage related to the study over a full week of its evening newscast and three mornings on the Today show. In addition, there will be a conference in DC on launch date, where many of the authors of the report will be there to discuss their analysis. Details to follow!

We covered this a couple of years ago, but a reader sent it in and it's just too good not to bring to light, especially when we have the original.

This gem is from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine, written for male supervisors of women during World War II. These were "helpful tips" on supervising women at work (emphasis mine):

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

Is it just me or does this sound like an episode of the Crocodile Hunter? Except in this case they're, you know, not animals. Sigh.

The rest of this madness is after the jump, my fave being, "A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day." Just give me a tube of lipstick and I'll be ready to take on the world!

According to the AP:

Women like Aysun Akbay, a 24-year-old Turk, are slowly making inroads into the upper levels of seafaring, a profession more resistant than most to female command. Women have long worked on passenger ships, but they are increasingly enduring the risks and hardships of life on merchant vessels, a key engine of global commerce.

Akbay was recently captured by pirates (seriously people) who are holding about 100 mariners captive for ransom. So far, it appears that Akbay is actually being treated better than the rest of the male captives, allowed to call her family. She uses the special permission to call other sailors' families as well.

The AP also reports:

Founded in 1974, the Women's International Shipping & Trading Association, or WISTA, reported a membership increase of 40 percent in the past two years, with 20 country branches and more than 1,000 individual members.

Fascinating, right?

While I and the rest of the world mourn the death of Patrick Swayze, I hope the death of another amazing and important figure in American history doesn't slip through the cracks. Today the AP is reporting the death of Crystal Lee Sutton, labor organizer and activist for the working class, whose story of fighting to unionize textile plants in the South was depicted in the film "Norma Rae."

From the AP:

In 1973, Sutton was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at J.P. Stevens when a manager fired her for pro-union activity.

In a final act of defiance before police hauled her out, Sutton, who had worked at the plant for 16 years, wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard and climbed onto a table on the plant floor. Other employees responded by shutting down their machines.

Even though Sally Field won a best-actress Academy Award for playing the character inspired by Ms. Sutton, the AP reports today that she never made much profit off the movie. I wonder if that was because the film execs didn't give her her fair due, or because she was too much "of the people" to get rich from the story. Or some other unknown reason.

Either way, she is completely bad-ass and her work is inspirational to me. As a female labor organizer in the 70's fighting against low pay and poor working conditions for "ordinary people," both black and white, she was certainly a trailblazer.

May she rest in peace.

The New York Times reported last week on a study that shows low-wage workers are cheated out of pay and workers' compensation at staggering rates. According to the study, "68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week."

Wage-law violations disproportionately impact people who experience discrimination based on other categories in addition to class:

The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis responded to the study:

"There is no excuse for the disregard of federal labor standards -- especially those designed to protect the neediest among us." Ms. Solis said she was in the process of hiring 250 more wage-and-hour investigators. "Today's report clearly shows we still have a major task before us," she said.

Secretary Solis is a longtime supporter of labor. Hopefully having an advocate in a position of power will prove beneficial here and she will be able to use this study as a reason to combat unfair employment practices.

ABC News reports on a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University which supposedly determined that women with higher testosterone levels "take more risks and are more likely to choose a finance career." Testosterone levels made no difference in men's career choices in the study. The sample size was 500 graduate students.

I know that hormones play a real role in our behavior--no matter our sex--but these kinds of studies worry me. It feels as if isolating only one factor like this, especially one so biologically-determined, underplays all of the other huge influences on how we choose careers, get educated, seek mentors, develop an identity, determine our own gifts etc. The socialization, for example, that we experience as a result of our socioeconomic class, seems like a far greater influence on whether we see ourselves as "fit" for a career in finance, than whether we have a slightly higher testosterone level.

Which is all to say--okay, do the hormonal studies, but don't forget to couch them in the context of what I see as far more powerful social, economic, and psychological factors. Your thoughts?

According to a report by Catalyst entitled Women of Color in U.S. Law Firms, more than 75 percent of women of color will leave their employer within five years because of job dissatisfaction stemming from "complex barriers," including:

* A greater sense of "outsider status" and limited growth opportunities.
* Racial and gender stereotyping and more feelings of sexism in the workplace compared to
white women.
* Lack of access to high-profile client assignments and important client engagements.
* Missed opportunities for candid feedback.

The study is the fourth and final in Catalyst's Women of Color in Professional Services Series "examining how the intersectionality, or combined identities of gender and race/ethnicity, puts women of color at a unique disadvantage in the workplace."

I wonder if some of our readers want to speak to their experiences within law firms? I have a hunch we have more than a few legal minds within the feministing community and I'd love to hear your reactions.

Hey everyone--I'm back from my month long hiatus in the land of book writing, homemade pasta, and internet disconnection (otherwise known as the Bellagio Centre in Italy). It was truly an incredible, life-changing month for all sorts of reasons, and I plan on writing about some of them over the next few weeks (especially the incredible international artists that I met). I wanted to start by reflecting a bit on Virginia Woolf's old idea about women needing their own space and time. I have never felt this more acutely than when I finally got it. Woolf wrote:

Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.

The Bellagio Center was actually created because an Italian princess who owned the villa bequeathed it to the Rockefeller Foundation with the explicit instructions that it be used as a place for international artists and scholars to come and have interdisciplinary interactions aimed to promote social justice. On my residency alone there were women and men from Kenya, South Africa, the Netherlands, India, Nigeria, Japan, Azerbaijan, and more from the U.S. They came from a variety of class and ethnic backgrounds, and worked in a wide variety of fields--from law to international development, from sculpture to anthropology.

Thanks to my peeps here for picking up my slack, and thanks to that Italian principessa for having the vision to provide people, especially women, with a room of one's own. I feel so honored to have had the opportunity and will do my damndest to make sure others get the same kind of affirmation, time, and space. Admissions is currently closed, but will reopen in the fall. Here's info on the process. And feel free to add info about other residencies in the comments section!

This article from last week's NY Times has been inspiring some lively discussion. The article features an interview with Carol Smith, senior vice president and chief brand officer for the Elle Group, in which she claims, among other things, that in her experience, "female bosses tend to be better managers, better advisers, mentors, rational thinkers. Men love to hear themselves talk." In the same article, she goes on to make this gem of a generalization:

"We women take things very personally. We're constantly playing things over in our head -- "What did that mean when they said that?" -- when they mean nothing. And I'm certainly not immune to this. So there's a downside to women."

Of course, Ms. Smith covers a variety of topics in the interview, but these are the quotes that stood out to me. I came away with two main impressions after reading this article.

The Women and Work Commission have released a new report (PDF) with research and stats on the current gender pay gap as well as a call to action to work on the ground and address various problems that contribute to the gap.

According to their findings, while the pay gap has narrowed in the last 10 years, it has widened again since 2007. I like their suggestion for smaller, local approaches as well as policy changes:

The commission pointed to a failure of "small scale and sporadic" efforts to break down gender stereotypes in schools and urged the government to focus its efforts there.

"Often without even thinking about it, young girls can choose to role-play at being 'teachers' for example, while boys might choose 'builders,'" it said.

"This segregation is ingrained in our culture and has significant implications for the career choices that young men and women make and, in the long run, their future earnings."

It also said women often faced penalties because they take time out of the labour market to care for family members or work part-time in a bid to balance work and home responsibilities.

New laws would also be needed "to ensure that a step change actually takes place," it said.

Women in the UK currently earn, on average, 22.6 percent less than men. The gap for women who work part time is significantly larger, at a nearly 40 percent gap.

Check out this awesome new social network for writers that my good friend Deborah Siegel and new friend Kamy Wicoff just started using the Ning software. You can create your own profile, start groups and discussion threads about anything and everything literary, and find out about upcoming workshops. Already on the books: Twitter for Writers and Blogging for Writers. Groups include Memoir Enthusiasts, Changing the World, and the dangerous sounding, Writers on Fire.

It seems like one mighty solution to "the ambition condition," as Anna Clark dubbed it in an issue of Bitch Magazine a ways back. Clark wrote:

There's no simple gender indicator for the weird fusion of insecurity and ambition, of the feigned nonchalance and quiet competitiveness that's common in writers of all sorts. But these traits are complicated by the cultural caricatures of ambitious women and the uneven historical patterns that have dictated whose talent is rewarded and whose isn't.

Ambitious women unite at She Writes, unabashedly sharing their recent publications and reviews, unashamedly asking for help when they need it, and--here's hoping--creating a truly successful, collaborative community in the process. Can't wait to see how this story develops...

Staceyann Chin rocked it like no other, reading from her new memoir, The Other Side of Paradise and really inspiring everyone. Check out her work on her website.

"Generation Obama" Your generation has already made history, has already changed the course of the country. You're the most diverse, technologically linked gen in history. We need to put money and resources into science because that's where the the future is, innovation is.

The consensus among scientists about climate change is unprecedented. They have no incentive to agree with one another. Yet there are people in this town who won't support Obama, who are afraid of the future. They are afraid of the next wave of energy technology.

This president needs your support to get through this door that has been closed for so long. This door is to innovation in energy technology. Every president running for office since Richard Nixon has talked about energy independence but none has been able to deliver. We have a wealth of solar power in America. We have a wealth of wind resouces. What we have never done is connection our clean energy centers to our population centers.

Let's put people to work, putting up solar panels, building wind turbines. We are relying on Barack Obama to get this revolution started, but he's relying on you to get it done. Get it done generation Obama!

Poor people are going to most affected by these climate/environment related problems, from the downsides of global warming.

The case of Ricci v. DeStefano involved 17 firefighters who had taken the qualifications exam to become firefighters. All passed, all were white, but one Latino, and the city invalidated the test because they feared a racial discrimination lawsuit. The court found that this was essentially "reverse" racism and violated Title XII.

The ruling yesterday to overturn Ricci v. DeStefano was another bad decision in a series of bad decisions by the SCOTUS that will have implications for communities of color, women and poor people. Legal Momentum tells us why,

The Court created a new, more stringent standard for employment discrimination claims in striking down the New Haven Fire Department's attempt to ensure that its promotional exam did not discriminate against Black and Latino candidates. We believe that the standard articulated by the Court reflects a flawed interpretation of Title VII and is contrary to congressional intent.

Irasema Garza, President of Legal Momentum, stated: "Employment discrimination continues to be a major problem. To this day, women and minorities remain egregiously under-represented in many employment sectors. Astoundingly, the Court's decision acknowledges this fact and yet requires employers to avoid policies and practices that would help to remedy this discrimination. This decision will make it far more difficult for women and minorities to get good jobs in fields that continue to exclude them, such as firefighting, and for employers to eliminate barriers that have proved discriminatory in their effect."

Further, as a supporter of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, Legal Momentum strongly disagrees with those who might use the Court's decision to imply that Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues in the Second Circuit erred in their ruling below. The Second Circuit panel of which Judge Sotomayor was a part acted with appropriate restraint in applying the precedent as it existed at that time. The matter before the Supreme Court involved issues of first impression and the Second Circuit's opinion was consistent with the views of four Justices on the Supreme Court as well as with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice.

Also, what about the possibility that Alito was also racially biased in making this decision? As Adam aptly asks at Tapped, why is racial discrimination only considered an offense when it is women or people of color being biased against whites?

...but is he really the only one? Public moral outcries of elected officials sexual behavior is complex, often tedious and not really in the name of justice. The prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, likes to hire woman to attend parties and do who knows what else. Barbara Montereale, one of the women in the much reprinted picture of two women photographing each other in Berlusconi's bathroom sent the pictures to the press to be published for the truth to come out. She was paid and flown down to spend time with him. The Italian authorities are starting an investigation according to the Telegraph UK.

The three women, whose accounts of their evening with Mr Berlusconi apparently largely corroborate each other, have been questioned by police in Bari who are investigating Mr Tarantini for allegedly inciting prostitution.

Mr Berlusconi faces increasing pressure to explain whether he knew if the women were being paid to attend his parties and whether he slept with a prostitute.

He is under attack not only from the press and the opposition but also the Roman Catholic Church.

I don't actually care what the Catholic church deems moral and immoral, or what makes them upset. This is not a matter of morality, but a question of exploitation and the use of women by men in power. And this is not the only story, it is a trend with men in power to hire women to do whatever they want with and their bloated sense of self and ego that comes with having so much power creates a vacuum where anything is for sale and purchase. Isn't that what happened with Eliot Spitzer?

I find moral panic and outrage over the often grotesque, exploitative sexual behavior of politicians hilarious. My instinct is to suggest that it is a private matter, just as I don't want you to talk about my private sex life, I don't think anyone's should be fodder for news material. On the other hand, that fact that stories like this come up over and over again merely shows us what men in power think is legitimate behavior. This is not a matter of "i gotcha," but more about the ways entitlement plays out with our beloved "statesmen."

USA Today columnist David Zincenko had an op-ed today titled "Decline of the American Male":

Like most Americans, I look at the news about the economy, the need for health care reform and our growing national debt, and I worry about how we're going to escape the recession.

But as someone who has spent his career working to save an endangered species men I have another worry on my mind: What are we going to do about the Great He-cession?

This troubling trend has been going on for several years, but it really picked up speed at the end of 2008. Of the 5.2 million people who've lost their jobs since last summer, four out of five were men. Some experts predict that this year, for the first time, more American women will have jobs than men. And that's just furthering the decline of the endangered male. (Emphasis mine)

That's right, folks - a "he-cession." While men in fact are losing jobs at a higher rate than women, what the author isn't taking into account is that not only are women paid less and generally have worse jobs than men, but are economically behind men in so many other ways. Dana Goldstein actually took this on last week in the American Prospect:

Historically, men suffer the majority of job losses during recessions, so policy-makers focus their efforts on getting men back to work. But when the economy picks up again, women typically do not share equally in the gains, in part because they aren't equally employed in high-paying fields. And unemployment isn't the only indicator of economic struggle. Women are one-third more likely than men to have sub-prime mortgages, nearly 60 percent of impoverished children are living in female-headed households, and the poverty rate is higher among women than it is among men of any race. Undergirding all that is the stubbornness of the pay gap between men and women, meaning that women still earn just 78 cents on the male dollar--even for the same work, with the same educational background and number of years on the job. Advocates say that given these disparities, it is actually women who are harder hit by the recession, despite more staggering joblessness among men.

What bothers me the most is the author's implication that men are being "left behind" not really because of the recession, but as a sacrifice of women's progression: "Women have gained in the past century, while men have fallen behind."

It's one thing to talk seriously about how the recession has effected the many groups of people who are suffering from it (including so many men who have lost their jobs), but to use it as a way to push some post-patriarchal nonsense is just ridiculous. Or should I say, "he-diculous." Jesus.

This is a guestblog from Audacia Ray of Waking Vixen and author of Naked on the Internet.

This past week it was revealed that there are some new cases of HIV within the adult industry in Los Angeles. The LA Times and LAist have both covered the story, as have adult industry media outlets AVN and Xbiz. A stunning majority of straight porn companies do not require condoms and actively discourage their use - in the business this is called "condom optional" which is euphemistic for "you either perform without a condom or you don't perform for this company." The gay porn industry has slightly different standards than the straight porn business. Gay porn companies do not require testing, with the idea that it is an invasion of privacy and HIV shouldn't prevent people from working/having sex, but the more reputable companies require condom use. The Gay Video News Awards (GayVN) will not consider a film for an award if there is "barebacking" (sex without a condom) in it.

I worked in and around the sex industry (porn and other sectors) for several years, so my take on the news of recent HIV cases and the dynamics of health, safety, and responsibility within the porn business is colored by my experiences in and frustrations with the business. I directed and produced a bisexual feature porn film, The Bi Apple, which was shot in NYC in summer 2006 and released in February 2007. It went on to win a Feminist Porn Award for Hottest Bisexual Scene and was nominated for Best Bisexual Video at the GayVN Awards (where, by the way, it was pretty fun to be the lone girl director). The company I made the film for required performers to be negative for HIV, chlamydia, and gonorrhea, and I required all performers to wear condoms for vaginal and anal sex and the option to use condoms for oral sex (no one opted to negotiate condom use for oral). I also paid for tests for the performers who weren't working regularly and didn't have a recent test on hand.

Richard Brown, from American Express talks about the intersection between corporate philanthropy and leadership development.

Janelle Shubert, from Babson College, talks about social entrepreneurship. Babson College, which she claims is the premier educational institution globally for social entrepreneurship, is based on three principles: people, planet, profit. According to Ashoka, one of the leading organizations on social entrepreneurship:

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.

Janelle says that her hope is that women worldwide continue to have access to employment and training, income and knowledge. If you're interested in S.E., you should also check out Echoing Green, the Schwab Foundation, and the Skoll Foundation. For a critique of the SE framework, check out this coverage of Dr. Paul Farmer's speech on the subject.

Maria Torres from the NYC Economic Development Corporation is up next. She talks about the Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan-(1) create jobs today, (2) diversify economy so we can create more jobs for tomorrow, (3) more affordable housing.

How can women take advantage of this? Check out government partnerships with organizations like Nontraditional Employment for Women.

She also talks about Opportunity NYC, a somewhat controversial program aimed at helping families break out of cycles of intergenerational poverty by paying them incentives to reinforce certain behaviors. It will be evaluated for effectiveness at the end of a five year stint.

"The big message is that we think opportunity exists, that this is the best time to invest in New York City, to invest in women."

Next up is Sara Gould, of the Ms. Foundation.

She starts by talking about women's funds and the network which the Ms. Foundation is a part of, The Women's Funding Network.

She also talks about the ways in which this economic downturn has often been framed as a men's issue, but she reminds us that this is also because of years of gender segregation in the workforce. We can't talk about all women in the labor market as one group because women of different races and classes have such different experiences. Women still comprise the majority of low-wage workers. Women are more likely to be without health or employment insurance. We are still living with the pay gap, and we are still living with this extreme occupational segregation. There are 27 million women and children living in poverty in the U.S. Unemployment for female heads of household is 10%, increased over the last year, of course.

Ms. Foundation, the oldest women's foundation (36 years old), is taking a new approach to their work which they're calling "creating connections." It is about lifting up leaders out of issue-area silos, being able to fund at the intersections, and build great power to bring about policy and cultural change to benefit women of color, poor women, and in so doing, benefit everyone. This means less restricted money and more funding at the race/class/gender intersections.

"We believe in funding sustained civic engagement, we believe in funding the trusted messengers in communities, we believe in getting resources to the ground."

Don't miss this great group of articles over at The American Prospect about women's economic opportunities and the recession. An excerpt:

It is time for a different conversation about working women--one that considers the choices and careers of professional women with children, yes. But one that devotes far more time and energy to the needs of the majority of women workers--those without advanced degrees or professional salaries who must work to support their families--and to crafting policies that work for them.

Related posts:
Supreme Court: Pregnancy discrimination A-OK!
Pregnancy Discrimination Galore at Bloomberg LP
Quick Hit: Employers get real (discriminatory)
Pregnancy discrimination complaints at record levels
Pregnancy discrimination on the rise
Double whammy

Approximate transcript after the jump.

Not only do female unionized workers earn more, but this great op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News by a single working mother gives us personal account of why unions can be a pretty damn big feminist issue:

I became a single mother of an 8 year-old son while I was serving in the United States Army. This was a very frightening experience for me. My son's dad was not around to help raise him. After I left the Army, I found a job working for a company where women had no opportunity to advance. I was fortunate to then land a union job. I started work with a 90-day probation period, and on my 89th day I had an accident for which I was fired.

Even though I didn't have grievance rights, my union fought for me. The accident wasn't my fault, but my employer argued I was responsible. Because of my union steward, however, the mediator decided to reinstate me. To begin with, the accident wasn't my fault, and the mediator also pointed out that there were four men who were involved in accidents in their first 90 days and weren't fired. Would I have gotten my job back if I didn't have a union fighting for me? Was this worth every penny of my dues? You're darn right it was. I love my job and I raised my son with no worries. I earn a fair day's pay, decent benefits and have job security. Shouldn't everybody have this?

The op-ed was written in efforts to get Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which she has recently said she would consider negotiating.

Read more here about why the Employee Free Choice Act is a feminist issue and take action here.

We've gotten a few emails from you college kiddos making your final jaunt across that stage for the very coveted and damn expensive diplomas. You're excited. You're scared. You're maybe a little hungover. You've asked us for advice on getting jobs in the feminist/blogging/writing worlds, and so I thought I would offer a few little things that I've learned the hard way in case they can be helpful:

1. Don't just apply to law school because it feels like something that you can tell your aunts and uncles at your graduation parties or makes you feel safe in this economy. Do it if you really want to be a lawyer.

2. You've heard it before from us. You'll hear it again from us. Negotiate. Even in this economy. Even with women bosses, who can sometimes be the worst about giving you the "oh, we're a poor organization, we couldn't possibly, we thought you were down" rigmarole. The worst they can say is no. And you shouldn't have to live off of Ramen noodles.

3. Take your work seriously, but have a sense of humor about yourself.
It's really important to be confident--you're a badass and you know it--but also to be humble and have a good laugh at yourself in the workplace.

4. Seek feedback. If you act like you'll break if people give you pointers, then you'll never improve or being more self-aware.

5. There's nothing wrong with combining creative or "intellectual" work with a job that pays the bills. I still think about waitressing sometimes because (a) I loved waitressing and (b) I loved the feeling of going home with cold, hard cash in my hand. Writing and activist work can sometimes feel like one long exercise in delayed gratification. Sometimes it's awesome to do something straight-forward, physical, and food-related.

6. Be patient. I know you hate that one, as did I, but it's just necessary. My first job out of college was nightmarish (think racism, plastic surgery, chain smoking in a tiny office, and control freak all packed into one tiny body of a boss), but I got through it.

7. Health insurance is important. I wish it weren't, but it is. Check out Healthy New York-type programs for low income people in your area. That's what I did for the first few years. Now I'm on Freelancer's Union health insurance.

8. Seek out mentors. Thank them often. Teach them about the world wide web and they'll love you.

9. House parties are way cheaper than going out to bars.

10. Just because you want to "do good" doesn't mean you should work at a nonprofit. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of jobs in the nonprofit sector that are awesome, but I think this is a default for so many young feminists who want to have meaningful work that ends up feeling really disappointing. What's more important than the 501c3 status is the quality of the relationships you can have at that office and the access to interesting work. And if you're drawn to the nonprofit sector, don't miss out on The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. I'm reading it right now and it's sploding my brain.

When Carol Sarler shares the following info over at the Daily Mail, you might assume that she'd then make an effort to defend the perfectly reasonable right of all women to decide when, if, and how they have children (IF being the operative word here):

Research conducted over six years shows that far from bosses and colleagues always being suspicious of a working mother, the opposite is becoming true: it is the childless woman who is regarded as cold and odd.

As a result, it is these single-track careerists who are increasingly likely to be vilified, refused jobs and denied promotion because many employers believe them to lack what the study calls 'an essential humanity'.

Instead, this incredibly insensitive and just plain discriminatory writer, does everything in her literary powers to chastise any woman who doesn't want children:

It's not the mothers, for a start, who are going to turn up late and hungover after a night on the razz; they'll have been up, dressed and alert for hours, having cooked a family breakfast and delivered their children to school. On time.

It's not the mothers, usually, who run the office bitch-fest.

They're not there to compete for the attentions of the male executives; they're there to get out of the house; they're there because they genuinely enjoy some adult company; and they're there because they have mouths to feed other than their own and shoes to buy for someone else's feet.

I'm the kind of lady who has known she wanted kids since she was a kid. It's just something I've felt in my bones. But it is exactly because it is such an intuitive, personal feeling that I know it isn't necessarily, nor should it be, a shared sentiment. Raising children is a huge sacrifice--financially, emotionally, in terms of sleep and autonomy--and one that, yes, a lot of women and men are up for, but it is beyond understandable when folks don't want to procreate. It actually makes more rational sense in a certain way.

If you love your childless life, and don't feel the pull to procreate, why in the world would you do it? So you could be a better worker, as Sarler bizarrely suggests? So you can cease your boozing? So you can stop looking for a man (because, ahem, all women are heterosexual and all mothers are married. Wha?!)? So you can stop being such a bitch (this, too, makes perfect sense...childless women, who get eight restful hours of sleep, great sex, and can spend what would have been diaper money on a massage or a great meal are always such bitches!)?

Suffice it to say that this Sarler gal has gotta a lot of hate mail coming her way. And I hope it's not just from those wacky childless women, but from all of us who champion every woman's right to choose about children.

Thanks to multiple readers for giving up the heads up.

Today our nation's highest court ruled in AT&T v. Hulteen that women who took maternity leave and were discriminated against by AT&T are shit out of luck.

Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed, when women took leave from their AT&T jobs to have a baby, those days did not count toward their pensions -- even though other types of leave, such as temporary disability, were not removed from the pension equation. So when the women went to retire, they had lower pensions than other employees who had worked there the same number of years, even those who had taken leave for other reasons.

AT&T lawyers said their pension plan was legal when the women took pregnancy leave, so they shouldn't have to recalculate their retirement benefits now. Congress did not make the Pregnancy Discrimination Act retroactive, they said, so the women should not get any extra money.

A majority of the justices agreed. "A seniority system does not necessarily violate the statute when it gives current effect to such rules that operated before the PDA," wrote Justice David Souter, who will retire next month.

Basically seven members of the Supreme Court are saying, "You were discriminated against? You're about to retire with less money because of it? Tough."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer dissented. By making it illegal to discriminate against women on pregnancy leave, "Congress intended no continuing reduction of women's compensation, pension benefits included, attributable to their placement on pregnancy leave," said Ginsburg, the court's only woman.

Even if the Pregnancy Discrimination Act cannot be applied retroactively, lawyers for the women argue that

the decision below should still stand based on Lorance v. AT&T Technologies, in which the Court held that if a seniority system is found to be facially discriminatory, it "'can be challenged at any time,'" and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which specifically provides for challenges to an intentionally discriminatory seniority system "when a person aggrieved is injured by the application of the seniority system."

Given that women tend to make less money during their working years and then live longer than men, they already struggle financially during retirement. And this ruling isn't going to help. According to the National Women's Law Center, which filed an amicus brief (PDF) in the case,

The most recent population surveys show that the median pension benefit for women over 65 is $8,110, compared to a $12,505 median for men in the same age range.

Much like the Court's awful ruling in Ledbetter, Congress could fix this with legislation.

The court's decision could affect thousands of women who took pregnancy leaves decades ago and now are headed toward retirement, said Christine L. Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. Now, the only way women who took pregnancy leave before 1979 can make their leave time count is through the good graces of their company or through legislation by Congress, she said.

Since I've never been too optimistic about the "good graces" of companies, I think it's time to push Congress to remedy this.

Scott Lemieux has more on how this relates to the diversity of the Court.

The National Party Government of New Zealand decided to abolish the Department of Labour's Pay and Employment Equity Unit yesterday, saying that they had to reprioritize funding and this just didn't make the cut. Even worse, our reader Melissa reports, is that none of the national news is covering the critical cut. She sent along this link, which too "a bit of a mission to find." An excerpt:

This shows an absolute disregard for the thousands of women workers in this country whose work is undervalued simply because they are women, said CTU President Helen Kelly. This decision destroys hopes that the unfairness in women's pay will be rectified soon.

"This is the second time that the National Party has rejected pay equity," said Kelly. "They dumped pay equity legislation as soon as they took office in 1990, and now they have done it again. Both the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Women's Affairs claim that National has been committed to gender equality since 1972. Their words of support for equal pay for women are utterly hollow."

Women in New Zealand are paid on average at least 12 per cent less than men doing the same jobs. In the public sector the gap is as much as 35 per cent.

Thanks to Melissa for the heads up.

A new report from Catalyst, Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives: What Change Agents Need to Know, looks at some of the hurdles keeping men from supporting gender initiatives in the work place and what factors made men more likely to support such initiatives.

Download the report here.

Via Girl With Pen.

Taxes! Don't know about you, but just seeing the word "taxes" can bring full-on panic. This week, President Obama announced part of his new tax code plan. I decided to get some help understanding it all from tax professor Annette Nellen, director of the Master's taxation program at San Jose State University.

Hope this helps! Here's Annette...

(I am not writing a transcript for this, but basically every man that interacts with this woman in the work place calls her a different derogatory term)

And why is it on a Tuesday? Because it is by Tuesday that women catch up to the wages earned by a man from the previous week.

via National Committee on Pay Equity.

Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. (Tuesday is the day on which women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous week.) Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.

Jon Henner at Open Salon is putting together stories, blog posts, artwork, etc. on the impacts of equal pay. You can go contribute your story.

Immigration reform is back in the news. I asked Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding executive director of Voces de la Frontera based in Wisconsin, to help explain the latest developments.

Here's Christine...

Last weekend's post was my attempt to help readers, if they were having a hard time like I felt most folks were, understand what was going on with AIG, bonuses and bailout money. This weekend's post is my attempt to help folks better understand what's going on with the auto industry and the auto bailout plans.

Susan Helper is AT&T Professor of Economics at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. She is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program. Here's Susan...

Need help understanding what's going on with AIG, bailout money and the big picture issues behind the financial crisis? Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, helps break it down.

Here's Sarah...

NY Times blog Economix has post by Nancy Folbre from yesterday on the discrimination that working caregivers experience - especially when they're mothers:

During the 1920s and 1930s, many employers refused to hire married women, or fired them once they married. As my fellow Economix blogger Casey Mulligan points out, such "marriage bars" are not allowed today. But family responsibilities still weigh more heavily on women than on men, accounting for much of the pay gap between the sexes. Some policy analysts argue that mothers make a lifestyle choice, opting for easier, more flexible work over greater responsibility and higher pay. Others, like myself, argue that our economic system imposes unfair penalties on those who care for others.

But shouldn't both sides in this debate protest when women (or men) are penalized simply because they are caregivers? Considerable evidence suggests that maternal responsibility intensifies gender stereotyping in harmful -- and often illegal -- ways.

I'm actually a pretty big fan of Folbre and glad to see her voice in the Times; I read her book The Invisible Heart in college - definitely recommend it.

Walmart is trying to convince an appeals court that the 1.6 million women who joined a lawsuit against them for discrimination on the basis of sex should be considered individually, not as part of a class action lawsuit. The Wall Street Journal reports:

A ruling in the case by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco could have broad implications for future discrimination lawsuits, according to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which last week filed a brief supporting the class certification that Wal-Mart opposes...The EEOC says that if Wal-Mart's argument is successful, it would effectively preclude claims for punitive damages and back pay in cases in which plaintiffs -- or the commission itself -- prove that there has been a pattern or practice of discrimination.

Class action is important for many reasons, especially in cases of sex discrimination in the workplace. For starters, it cuts down on legal fees (one giant case vs. 1.6 million smaller ones) and speeds up due process so that people see justice and move on with their lives.

But on a more psychological level, class action status allows an aggrieved population, in this case women workers, to stand together and seek parity through their collective strength. Enduring the bureaucratic battles, media attention, and scrutiny of this kind of legal procedure with a giant corporation is basically soul-killing if done alone.

The solidarity inherent in a class action suit is not only crucial for these plaintiffs, but imperative legal precedent moving forward. What good will the brand spankin' new Lilly Ledbetter Act do if no one has the resources or the stamina to stand up against their employers all alone?

Most industries are facing difficult times right now. Media, and independent media in particular, have long faced uphill battles, but the economic emergency is pushing many state and local newspapers to fold. As the bad news continues, I wanted to speak with someone about the possible ramifications of these losses.

Tracy Van Slyke, former publisher of the progressive, independent magazine In These Times, is the program director of the The Media Consortium, a network of the country's leading independent journalism organizations. (Full disclosure: Feministing is a member.) From their website:

"Millions of Americans are looking for honest, fair, and accurate journalism. We're finding new ways to reach them. Our strategy has three focal points: Making Connections, Building Infrastructure, and Amplifying Our Voice."

Here's Tracy...

Some of the take-aways from last night's intergenerational discussion on feminism, work, and the economy at 92Y Tribeca:

• There is an opportunity, this economic downturn, for all sorts of gender shake-up. When we're forced to recognize that old styles of leadership and assumptions about gender roles are no longer valid, we can get even the most reluctant folks to try a more enlightened, equal approach. The media coverage of this phenomenon has been totally unsatisfying (dads who cook! women who work! what a revelation!), but in truth, there is something interesting going on.


• American workplaces won't change--in policy or culture--until men take this on as their own issue just as women have for years. If they can't do it under this big tent movement called feminism, maybe they can invent their own way of owning the issues. I recommend John DeGraff's Take Back Your Time organization as one way for men to test the waters.


• When older women are happy with younger women, they refer to them as empowered. When they're irritated, they call us entitled. The real meaning of entitlement is "a belief that one is deserving of certain privileges or rights." Sounds like what feminism had in mind all along, no?


• The word "choice," as you might imagine, came up an awful lot. Gloria Feldt, who is part of the ungeneration and has been through a lot of life, gets irritated when women lament how difficult it is to have so many choices. Debbie Siegel, 40-years-old and facing lay off woes with her husband, talked about men being in a unique position to choose how they want to remake masculinity in this age of uncertainty. Elizabeth Hines, in her early 30s and 9 months pregnant, talked about how it never seemed like there was a "choice" to be had in her family. Women worked through motherhood, no question about it. I am really interested in the idea that feminism is too often cast as heroism instead of self-respect. In other words, it's been perverted to meant that you choose yes on everything, rather than carefully choosing autonomy, health, fulfillment, and yes, family, if that's what you want. I think our outlandish expectations for ourselves mixed with that sense so many women have that only they can make the dinner, have the talk with their teenage daughter, clean up the living room etc. well enough, perpetuates this sense of never being enough, either in work or family.

This is just a fraction of what we explored, but I thought I'd share a little for those who couldn't attend. Check out Elisabeth Garber-Paul's take on the panel over at RH Reality Check.

There's going to be another intergenerational pow-wow, Unfinished Business--Women's Vision for the Nation: What's It Going to Take?, this weekend at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for anyone that's interested. Deets here.

There were thousands of demonstrators this past Thursday outside of California's Supreme Court as justices weighed in on whether voters' decision to re-ban same-sex marriage in the state last November was a denial of fundamental rights or whether it's in the people's power to amend the state constitution.

But Prop 8 isn't the only issue facing LGBT communities. Ongoing battles across the nation continue for LGBT rights -- hate crime recognition, adoption rights, immigration and asylum rights, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," to name a few. Kim Ford has been an LGBT rights activist for more than 15 years, has worked extensively with community groups of color in New York City, and knows first-hand the myriad of everyday issues LGBT communities face. Here's Kim...

The NYTimes has a really interesting graphic on the gender wage gap. Check it out here.

It breaks wages down by profession to show how women compare to men across professions. It's interesting to notice the professions where women make more than men (special education teachers and postal clerks) and the professions where the wage gap is the largest (physicians and surgeons, financial managers and medical scientists).

I recently interviewed Cate LaBarre, a life coach based out of Central New York, on her work -- especially during these difficult times. I hope her words are helpful.

Here's Cate...

The New Zealand government has stopped investigations into pay inequity issues because they decided it would be too costly. Huh.

The investigations were set up by the previous Government and include research into why social workers at Child, Youth and Family are paid 9.5% less than their male counterparts and into inequities in female school support workers' wages.

Cancelling the investigations, State Services Minister Tony Ryall said addressing pay inequity would "generate an additional form of remuneration pressure that is unaffordable in the current economic and fiscal environment".

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly says working women deserve better.

"It is one thing to urge pay restraint in the public sector but quite another to endorse the unfair underpayment of these workers. The Government is effectively telling its own female employees that it doesn't care if it is discriminating against them.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I guess costliness doesn't matter so long as it's coming out of women's pockets.

There's been lots of talk about clean coal these days. Have you seen any of the industry's commercials? But what you haven't heard much about since Robert F. Kennedy visited the region back in the day is where coal comes from -- the Appalachian Mountains. His son continues to speak out about the region. Ashley Judd a long with many folks in her home state of Kentucky have been doing a lot of activism around mining and the disparities in the Appalachian Mountains there. Judd recently spoke out about a piece Diana Sawyer aired on 20/20 last week called "Children of the Mountains on Appalachian life in Kentucky -- Diane Sawyer is also from the state. The piece sparked some reaction in the blogosphere from folks who have been in the trenches working on these disparities just about their whole lives.

I decided to ask Theresa L. Burriss, the Assistant Professor of English & Appalachian Studies at Radford University, about everyday life in Appalachia and what she thought about clean coal and Diane Sawyer's piece. (Diane Sawyer did a follow-up piece last night on "Mountain Dew mouth".)

Here's Theresa...

Gotcha! This is not a post about sex... Nah, we're gonna talk about the economic stimulus bill that Obama signed yesterday. In addition to a bunch of much-needed funding for things like early childhood programs, health insurance, and assistance for low-income Americans, how will the law expand job opportunities for women? The National Women's Law Center breaks it down,

* Funding provided to rebuild infrastructure and develop clean energy will create many jobs and provide lasting benefits, but most of these jobs are in fields where women are still severely underrepresented. To help ensure that these opportunities are available to women and men, the Act provides $80 million for enforcement of worker protection laws and regulations. Among other things, these laws and regulations ban discrimination and require Federal contractors and subcontractors to take affirmative steps to ensure that all individuals have an equal opportunity for employment without regard to sex and other categories.

* The increased funding the Act provides for programs such as health care, education, child care, and other social services will preserve and create jobs in fields currently dominated by women.

(Emphasis mine.) We hear a lot about laid-off white-collar workers. Yet, according to Crain's New York Business:

Domestic Workers United estimates that some 200,000 people work serving others in the metropolitan area. They are even more vulnerable than corporate employees during downturns because many of them work off the books, which means they don't have health insurance and can't collect unemployment.

In short, creating jobs in female-dominated sectors is definitely important. People in service jobs are slammed by the recession, and investing in infrastructure doesn't do much to help manicurists and child-care workers. But the flip side, as Legal Momentum points out, is making sure that those service jobs pay living wages:

Las Vegas is making an effort to arrest sex workers who are "repeat offenders" -- and the local newspaper has published photos of many of these woman.

"We're talking about girls who have been arrested repeatedly over the years, ones that we all know by face and by name," said Hughes, citing one woman who was arrested 18 times in a single year.

"If they get the message that Las Vegas is not going to ignore their subsequent arrests, then maybe they'll take their lifestyle to a different city," she said.

Ah, right. Clearly the only people with this "lifestyle," involved in this crime, are the women. Yup, all those women, selling sex to each other. Nah, no men purchasing sex. No pimps. Only these women pictured on the lefthand side of the screen. (Ok, end sarcasm...) Can you imagine the local police imposing a "crackdown" on johns or on pimps? Publishing photos of the men involved in this crime? Yeah, me neither. Even though I'm willing to bet there are a LOT of male repeat offenders as well.

Just because police don't have a list of the most prolific pimps doesn't mean the vice unit is ignoring that part of the problem in its undercover operations, Hughes said.

"We've got two investigative teams that deal with nothing but pimps," she said. "But we also want to minimize opportunities for prostitutes to be aggressive with the tourists and with men who aren't interested in that."

Because clearly the sex-workers are a more aggressive threat than the pimps or johns? Please. As I scroll down the page, reading this article, the women's photos run down the entire lefthand side. I mean, they just keep coming. This whole thing is so painfully gendered and shaming. Who is this helping?

Contact the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Reporter Alan Maimon: amaimon @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.

Info for letters to the editor is here.

Thanks to dozens of you for sending in the link.

UPDATE: On a related note, Kay writes, "If we are going to say prostitution is illegal, why are so few men prosecuted for it? The answer is because they are powerful, well-connected, and can afford expensive lawyers that can keep their names private. ... becoming 'tough on prostitution' is likely to fail in the same way becoming 'tough on drugs' has."

Last week, as the Obama administration and Congress debated exactly how far they were willing to go to deal with the current bleak economic realities, The New York Times highlighted the re-emergence of the rhetorical -- and policy -- discussion of the "safety net." One sentence pretty much sums it up:

Programs for the poor are often poor programs -- stigmatized and underfinanced.

But what happens when the people who need welfare are not characterized in the media as solely urban women of color? When the aid recipients include well-educated, former white-collar workers affected by the economic crisis, the vocabulary changes. Now it's suddenly a "safety net" -- a more positive, temporary-sounding term that does not have the same connotations as the much-maligned "W" word. 

In his 2004 book American Dream, Jason DeParle (who also reported the Times piece) summarizes the history of public assistance, and how society's perception of it changed depending on who was receiving that assistance. Welfare's earliest iteration was a Depression-era "safety net" program for widowed mothers. De Parle writes in the book,

The payments were reserved for a small elite of "fit" mothers with so-called suitable homes. That typically excluded divorced mothers and those with children born outside of marriage, and it almost always excluded racial minorities. The screening was so rigorous, those on the rolls were sometimes called "gilt-edged widows." Decades later, welfare would be condemned for encouraging poor women to not to work. But that was precisely what it was created to do--in Edwin Witte's words, "to release from the wage-earning role the parent whose task is to raise children."

When the government was strictly controlling which "fit" women were worth assisting, there was not a stigma attached to the aid. (To the contrary -- it was almost an honor!) This was a program that propped up traditional gender roles when society's anointed breadwinner (the husband and father) was deceased, and allowed these selected elite mothers to continue in their caregiving role full-time. But, as anti-discrimination and desegregation laws began to take hold, the "safety net" was widened to accept more women -- and the connotations of receiving aid began to shift. The "welfare queen" pejorative began appearing in the 1960s, as these programs were being integrated, and became a really destructive meme that public assistance has never really shaken. (The right wing bears a lot of responsibility for perpetuating this, but Democrats certainly aren't blameless, either.)

It's undeniable that the tanking economy is once again changing the face of who needs assistance to get by. Given the way people on public-assistance programs have been vilified, it will be interesting to see whether public perception actually does shift as demographics change. If I were feeling optimistic, I'd say that perhaps our country would come away from the economic crash with a more compassionate perspective on poverty, public assistance, and homelessness. But we'll see. I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE: My friend Noah, who brings some very relevant work experience to this discussion, responds on his blog, disPlacement.

Lauren had an understandably strong reaction to Courtney's post last week about her daily schedule. In a follow-up post, Lauren described her own work life -- and the economic situation surrounding her -- and wrote:

The other day, when I wrote, "a room of one's own is a privilege most of us don't -- and won't ever -- have," I wasn't trying to score some dramatic rhetorical point, or punish a successful person for being happy or having fulfilling work. In today's economic hierarchy some of us will be stuck on Maslow's lower rungs while others celebrate their own impending self-actualization -- this isn't a debate. But only one of these climbers gets the microphone.

She takes this a step further -- asking how, as the feminist blogosphere comes into more prominence, the writing of Professional Feminists might diverge from that of non-Professional Feminist women. While I wouldn't identify as a Professional Feminist -- I have a full-time day job that's not explicitly in the movement -- I am an editor and writer by profession. (Incidentally, I have actually been Lauren's editor before!) And I am grateful nearly every day that I have a full-time job that fulfills both my economic needs and my personal passion. Having a job I love is a privilege. And I do acknowledge the fact that this privilege affects not only what I write here on Feministing (and occasionally on TAPPED), but how I assign and edit articles. When I recently blogged about The New York Times' coverage of how upper-middle-class two-parent families are coping with the recession's gender implications, I wrote:

I understand that it's more interesting for the Times to write about gender dynamics in two-partner families where the male is the breadwinner. But, after awhile, the disproportionate coverage of impact of the economy on the upper-middle-class sends the message that these are the people who are most affected. That simply isn't true.

I've heard many people retort that, well, the people who read/buy the Times are upper-middle-class, and so that's the population they predominantly cover. But I don't think that's the whole story. I think it has way more to do with the economic status of the editors and reporters at the paper. Their friends are upper-middle-class professionals. They hear their friends discuss gender and the recession. They write an article that, surprise, happens to focus on upper-middle-class families. In their daily lives, I'd wager they don't actually hear from too many laid-off Midwest workers. (Which isn't to say they receive no coverage -- just demonstrably less, especially considering who's being impacted by the recession.)

Bringing it all back to Lauren's post and the Professional Feminist quandary, I think much of this applies to blogging, too. Most bloggers I know (especially women bloggers), feel most comfortable speaking to their own experience and community. Understandably so. It takes a concerted, sustained effort to write about people and dynamics beyond your personal experience, your own community.

This gets thorny to pull apart, because this conversation gets personal -- and folks get defensive -- really fast. I know both Courtney and Lauren personally, I know they are both incredibly smart, talented, and driven women. I know they both come to this conversation willing to, well, have a conversation! (Which is awesome.) It's not that one has done more to "earn" a career she loves, and neither one is getting rich. While it is indeed a privilege to make money doing what you love, for most of us, it is not lucrative.

A lot of this is lurking in the background of stories about job loss and career-shifting during this recession. Work is SO deeply tied to identity in this country, for better or worse, and so when jobs are at risk, everyone (yes, women too. duh.) feels pretty damn vulnerable. Talking about how our work-lives intersect and overlap with and inform our feminism is a conversation I want to continue. As Courtney wrote in comments to her post,

The post wasn't intended to be some sort of arrogant display of my day. As I said in the intro, I'd like to hear how others' days are composed in many different professions. I think privilege comes from secrecy and I was trying to be open about what one real day was like for me for those who are interested in the fields I work in.

I've already asked a friend of mine to write a guest post about how she is coping with being unemployed, as this is an experience I can't speak to personally. I would love to publish more stories from Feministing readers about how the recession has affected you -- and about how your daily routine affects your feminism. Send them to me at ANN [AT] FEMINISTING [DOT] COM.

It's been fascinating to watch the media coverage of the economic meltdown as it relates gender (and class) in our society.

In January, data showed that men's participation in the workforce was declining faster than women's. Basically, in recessions, more men tend to lose their jobs than women, hence there is a greater percentage of women in the workforce. (Hmmm... if what's bad for the economy is also bad for traditional gender roles, you'd think the right wing would have clamored a little harder for the stimulus package.)

The New York Times was inspired to publish an article on the implications for masculinity:

Mr. Steuer, 43, was recently laid off from his job at a small research business. "It's hard not to imagine yourself as the breadwinner," he said. "A lot of your ego eggs are in the job basket. I can't shake the psychology that I'm supposed to provide."

The article takes great pains to portray Steuer as a modern man, presumably to highlight the level to which these outmoded views of masculinity are ingrained in our society. (Say it with me, now: "Patriarchy hurts men, too!") New research also shows that the incidence of domestic violence rises along with unemployment. I have a hard time believing this is unrelated to issues of control and masculinity. And, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, lack of money is a common reason why a woman may refuse to leave her abusive partner.

As Emily Bazelon writes, "I'm skeptical about the broad claim that men feel the pain of layoffs more than women do." Me too. As the Times article notes, near the end:

YET while men may appear to reel more socially and psychologically from job loss, they fare far better when it comes to re-employment.

In a 2002 study, two sociology professors at Wichita State University, Charles S. Koeber and David W. Wright, found that women who were laid off and went on to look for another job were re-employed less often than men in the same position.

The realities of layoffs are just as bad -- or even worse -- for women. The Times does not provide actual data on the psychological effects of layoffs on men versus women, but I'd wager that a significant number of upper-middle-class women DO strongly see their job as tied to their identity, and are likely suffering psychological effects of joblessness as well.

A nagging problem with this article -- as with so much coverage of the economy -- is that it focuses on people of one economic class (upper-middle or upper class), with the same family dynamic: two-income families with mixed-gender partners, where the male partner earns (or earned) more. I'm guessing the gender dynamics play out differently in families where the female partner is already the primary breadwinner, in families with much lower total incomes, in families where there is a single breadwinner (yes, I think there are still gender dynamics in play when there is only one head of household). But we're not reading much about them.

I understand that it's more interesting for the Times to write about gender dynamics in two-partner families where the male is the breadwinner. But, after awhile, the disproportionate coverage of impact of the economy on the upper-middle-class sends the message that these are the people who are most affected. That simply isn't true.

UPDATE: Girl w/ Pen has more links on this subject.

On "Dress for Success" day at the Bank of England, women were sent the following memo:

"Look professional, not fashionable; be careful with perfume; always wear a heel of some sort -- maximum 2 inches; always wear some sort of makeup -- even if it's just lipstick." Shoes and skirt must be the same color. No-no's include ankle chains -- "professional, but not the one you want to be associated with;" white high heels; overstuffed handbags; an overload of rings, and double-pierced ears."

Wow. These are the supposed progressive, civilized leaders of the free world? I don't know these suggestions sound pretty damn antiquated to me.

Via the Cut.

What is up with all the sexist airlines?

While Southwest Airlines prefer to harass its customers, Spirit Air opts to feature sexist ads and debase their flight attendants. The image provided is one of their many heinous marketing ads they've been criticized for in the past - M.I.L.F. conveniently means "Many Islands Low Fares," as well as an ad that says, "We're proud of our DDs" (which stands for "deep discounts"). Their latest plan? To force their flight attendants to wear aprons with alcohol promotions on them.

Luckily, the Flight Attendants-CWA union is taking some action on both offenses. President Pat Friend, has been sending letters to CEO Ben Baldanza:

I feel as though I have entered a time warp and am reliving the battles for respect and justice for women that we fought 40 years ago. Several promotional fare ads...are demeaning not to just the hardworking flight attendants at Spirit Airlines but to all of America's professional flight attendants.

...

Flight attendants have a statutory obligation to enforce Federal Aviation Administration regulations regarding intoxicated passengers. In-flight aprons that prominently display a logo from an alcoholic beverage company sends the wrong signal to passengers and diminishes the ability of Spirit flight attendants to enforce vital safety and security regulations and procedures onboard.

Even AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker is calling on folks to call Spirit out on this bullshit, "With the recent focus on the heroic actions of the US Air pilot and crew whose experience and expertise saved the lives of the passengers, I think it is most appropriate that we speak out on this. Airline safety should certainly sell over sexual innuendos."

Indeed. Email their CEO and let them know what you think.

h/t to Tula!

Obama just said in his inaugural speech, "We wil restore science to its rightful place!" It is clear that the sustainable development of science is key to our future and Obama has made it clear that it is important to him. But the NYTimes asks, will this lead to an increase in women in science?

Researchers who have long promoted the cause of women in science view the incoming administration with a mix of optimism and we'll-see-ism. On the one hand, they said, the new president's apparent enthusiasm for science, and the concomitant rise of "geek chic" and "smart is the new cool" memes, can only redound to the benefit of all scientists, particularly if the enthusiasm is followed by a bolus of new research funds. On the other hand, they said, how about appointing a woman to the president's personal Poindexter club, the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology? The designated leaders so far include superstars like Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, and Eric Lander, genome meister.

What do you think? Will conditions for women in science improve now that there will be a critical focus on science?

From a local Detroit TV station, a story about how female snow plow drivers hold their own.

Thanks to Cody for the link!

I thought this story was inspiring.

When immigration agents raided Smithfield Food's huge North Carolina slaughterhouse two years ago, union organizer Eduardo Peña compared the impact to a "nuclear bomb." The day after, people were so scared that most of the plant's 5,000 employees didn't show up for work. The lines where they kill and cut apart 32,000 hogs every day were motionless. "Workers think it's happening because people were getting organized," said Vargas at the time.

Yet on Dec. 11, 2008, when the votes were counted in the same packing plant, 2,041 workers had voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), while just 1,879 had voted against it. That stunning reversal set off celebrations in house trailers and ramshackle homes in Tarheel, Red Springs, St. Pauls, and all the tiny working-class towns spread from Fayetteville down to the South Carolina border.

Read the full article at The American Prospect.

Amen! Via AP:

Energized by the prospects of a pro-labor president, House Democrats marked the first week of the new Congress Friday by pushing through two bills to help workers, particularly women, who are victims of pay discrimination.

Unlike President George W. Bush, who threatened to veto the two bills when they came up in the last session of Congress, President-elect Barack Obama has embraced them.

"Today we face a transformational moment," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., chief sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act. "With a new Congress, a new administration, we have a chance to finally provide equal pay for equal work and make opportunity real for millions of American women."

The bill could reach the Senate floor as early as next week, so make sure your senator knows about your support. Here's more info about Lilly Ledbetter and read the whole AP piece for more details on today's passage.

Lisa Belkin had a really interesting piece in Sunday's New York Times about the ways in which the public concern over New York Senator hopeful Caroline Kennedy's experience mirrors a much larger work/life issue. She writes:...

...women changed the culture of the workplace, not least when highly visible women began to leave it. The rhythm of office work -- its hours, its demands, its life cycle -- is designed for a man, ideally a man with a wife back home with the kids. Ever since the industrial age, career tracks have been built on the assumption that you can work around the clock in your 20s, shoulder increasing responsibility in your 30s and 40s and begin to ratchet down and move over for the next generation in your 50s and 60s.

That doesn't work for many women, who are apt to want to pause, physically and emotionally, for children, maybe slow down in their 30s, when men are charging ahead, and come back with a new energy in their 50s, when men are slowing down.

She goes on to talk about how work "experience" used to be defined, visually speaking, as a ladder. Just keep on climbing and hope for the rewards on your way up. But a new paradigm is taking over, one that looks less like a ladder and more like a "lattice"--a shape that allows for stepping off and stepping back on, caretaking for children and aging parents, working non-traditional hours, taking detours into various fields, developing various skills etc. In this paradigm, success would be less defined by one's years of experience or status within a particular linear framework, but the quality of one's work, the breadth of one's experience, one's capacity for reinvention and adaptation.

It's, undoubtedly, a very middle class way of looking at the problem of women and work (but what else would you expect from the Times and Belkin?!). I do find it interesting, nevertheless. Your thoughts?

Yeah, I had to write the whole thing out, since the news report calls her "beaten" which just doesn't site well with me as a headline or a way to describe someone who has suffered both from domestic violence and then job discrimination.

Let's face it, Hooters is one of my least favorite companies in America. They cater to the lowest common denominator of male arousal via normative white beauty standards and create spaces where women are objectified. They also serve crappy food. And while this story isn't surprising (unfortunately), it is disgusting.

A young women suffered a severe life threatening attack and since the physical signs of the attack were apparent, Hooters said she was not fit to work. The world according to Hooters, this is totally logical right? The world according to common sense, I think this is actually-inhumane.

A waitress was barred from working at the Hooters restaurant in Davenport after a violent physical attack left her bruised and unable to meet company standards for maintaining a "glamorous appearance."

The waitress alleges she was fired after taking time off to recover from the assault. Hooters officials say the waitress abandoned her job, but also say that the woman's bruised body made her temporarily ineligible to work as a "Hooters Girl."

You can read the rest of the story here. (Trigger warning)

If you have the post-holiday blues, check this out: Women's Media Center Media Manager Rebekah Spicuglia wrote a Huffington Post piece about Chili's in Georgia firing her sister over a sexual harassment case. An excerpt:

When my sister, Rachel Spicuglia, a five-year employee of Chili's Restaurant (owned by Brinker International), reported to her manager the escalating sexual harassment she was receiving from the cooks, which had culminated in an assault that morning in the walk-in refrigerator, the manager asked Rachel if the offending employee had gotten a "full cup" when he had grabbed her breasts. Shocked that the manager would joke in such way, Rachel protested that it wasn't funny, but he insisted that it was actually information that he needed to know.

Rachel ended up taking a leave of absence, filing EEOC Charge of Discrimination on August 12, but she continued to work with Chili's to arrange transfer to another store. The transfer was approved, but Rachel's calls to the store manager were never returned, and on December 9, Rachel received a letter from her health insurance, saying that her medical benefits were denied, due to the fact that she was terminated from her job. Two weeks before Christmas, without any warning, and still waiting for the EEOC to review her complaint. Apparently, Chili's was unable to fire Rachel during her leave of absence, but under Georgia law, unlike other states, you can suffer sexual harassment and be fired.

Shortly after Rebebkah's piece hit the front page of HuffPo, Brinker International, who owns Chili's, re-hired her sister, offering her the chance to resume her five year tenure with the company at a new location of her choice. Rebekah has recently posted a follow-up, which gives an even bigger picture of women in the workplace, particularly in service jobs:

There are too many people like Breslin who see sexual harassment as a general mass of "gray area" incidents. Regulating behavior in the workplace IS possible and happens every single day, as employers set a code of conduct for their employees to maintain. In addition, the impact of state legislation and regulation supporting Title VII cannot be underestimated, and Georgia residents would be better served by implementing their own laws, taking sexual harassment and employment law seriously.

Sometimes, justice is actually won through the twin tools of a empathic heart and a democratic media. Way to go Rebekah and Rachel! I'm excited to think about more ways in which HuffPo, and blogs in general, can put pressure on employers to treat their workers--women and men--with respect and dignity.

Yeah, you heard it right. Apparently to be a cocktail waitress, you can't also be Muslim and wear what you want.

A Muslim cocktail waitress who claims she was sacked for refusing to wearing an 'indecent' red dress is suing a bar for £20,000.

Fata Lemes, 33, said the figure-hugging scarlet dress made her look like a nightclub hostess and was 'physically revealing and openly sexual'.

Miss Lemes said bosses at the Rocket bar allowed customers to think that 'waitresses could be treated as prostitutes'.

She is suing for sexual harassment and sex discrimination.

Sounds like a classy place.

Via.

Reader Meredith sent along a link to this post by Steven Levitt on the Freakonomics blog:

What Do Prostitutes and Rice Have in Common?

If you believe what you read, then the answer to that question is that they are both examples of one of economics' most elusive objects: Giffen goods. But don't always believe what you read.

A Giffen good is a product or service for which demand rises with price. In other words, if you hold everything else constant, but the good gets more expensive, the quantity consumed will increase.

I don't think it's inherently demeaning to analyze the economics of sex work. I do, however, think an entire post that equates human beings with a GRAIN is pretty fucking unacceptable. Also, note that the post does not compare the commodities purchased -- i.e. sex and rice -- but instead treats sex workers as if they themselves, rather than their services, are bought and sold.

Then, just in case any readers missed the fact that he doesn't think sex workers are human beings, Levitt turns it all into a big joke:

I offer a Freakonomics contest: the commenter who provides the best answer to the question of what prostitutes and rice have in common within the first 24 hours of this post will win their choice of Freakonomics schwag.

You'll be totally shocked to learn that the comments are a cesspool.

So I have a similar contest for you, dear commenters: What do asshole economists and rice have in common? Best answer wins a set of Feministing magnetic poetry.

A new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology reports that women make up less than 20 percent of all cardiologists and that two-thirds of women continue to report discrimination.

What do you think?

I kind of love the parallel: because the wage gap is like a big fuck you to women.

From Sunday's New York Times:

[Starla D.] Darling, who was pregnant when her insurance ran out, worked at Archway for eight years, and her father, Franklin J. Phillips, worked there for 24 years.

"When I heard that I was losing my insurance," she said, "I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son's delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself."

So Ms. Darling asked her midwife to induce labor two days before her health insurance expired.

"I was determined that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for," said Ms. Darling, who was interviewed at her home here as she cradled the infant in her arms.

As it turned out, the insurance company denied her claim, leaving Ms. Darling with more than $17,000 in medical bills.

I just had to highlight this anecdote because it shows so starkly how all of these issues are connected.

Also check out the coverage of the sit-in at a Chicago factory on Sunday, where workers demanded the wages they're owed. Shark-Fu has more...

Related:
Women Charged More for Identical Health Insurance
Saving on health care costs by crossing borders
New report: Unionized women workers earn more
Health care is a feminist issue

This bitch has been pondering the themes represented in the comment made by Ed Rendell about Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano's nomination as Homeland Security chief. Rendell said Napolitano was a perfect pick because she doesn't have a family and can dedicate herself totally to the job.

Blink.

There's a lot to be bothered by in that but I must confess that what bothers me most is the idea that working in politics requires a lack of a life...and the unspoken belief that women with demanding lives can't work in politics.

Despite the excitement generated by Senator Clinton's presidential run, little attention is paid to the need for women to run for political office in all areas of government. I've spoken to a lot of women who have considered running for local or state office and almost all of them point to the daunting time commitments and their concerns over being able to balance that shit with the demands of their personal lives.

And many of them are single (gasp!) and have family demands that may or may not contain children (gasp again!!).

Even as I encourage them to explore the possibilities I have to acknowledge the fact that life in politics is often a major time commitment that puts serious strain on a person's work/life balance.

But we can't get stuck there.

We just can't.

We need more women in public office and that means we need to explore the challenges and work those problems out to come up with solutions that support working women everywhere rather than exclude us from representing our communities just when we need it most.

We've got lives and they desperately need to be represented in government.

So let's put our thinking caps on and get about the bitness of making that possible!

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research says that the raise in wages and benefits women receive from joining a union raises is on par with having a college education.

"For women, joining a union makes as much sense as going to college," said John Schmitt, a Senior Economist at CEPR and the author of the study. "All else equal, joining a union raises a woman's wage as much as a full-year of college, and a union raises the chances a woman has health insurance by more than earning a four-year college degree."

The report, Unions and Upward Mobility for Women Workers, also found that unionized women workers earned 11.2 percent more than their non-union peers and that women in unions were more likely to have health insurance and a pension plan.

Via SEIU.

In Iran a cab company has started that is by and for women only. It has provided employment for widowed women and given them ownership over their own means of transportation.

At the centre, the women drivers are also given lessons in basic car maintenance and such essentials as how to change a burst tire. All the operators at the centre are women too. But the concept was the brainchild of a man, Mohsen Uruji, who says he spotted a gap in Tehran's transport system.

"What was missing was a role for women," he says.

"By setting up this purely private sector company, we've been able to provide jobs for many women, as well as a service for other women who want to travel around in a more relaxed way."

Many of the drivers are war widows or divorcees who really need the work, and are referred to the agency by some of the big welfare foundations.

The project has grown in popularity and is hoping to have 2000 women run cars soon. I think this is interesting and very cool all at once. As the article says, it does both reinforce traditional gender roles feeding into the very idea that women and men can't occupy space together alone, but at the same time solves and relieves many problems women are dealing with on a daily basis.

via BBC.

Newsweek recently posted a Q&A with Jean-Claude Van Damme conducted by Sarah Ball, a female reporter in her early 20s. I know that women are sexually harassed at work every day. But not all of those women have got a tape-recorder on them...

There's a monologue in the film about being a washed-up action star. Did you improvise that?
I like structure--like driving: go past the school on the street, stay on the right side, no hitting the car, go in right, you'll see a big church, stop and take a left, and you'll have it. By doing this I'm giving a structure of life, a path of light, and showing what happens between me and me, which is something very beautiful.

Beautiful? Why?
I really opened myself up in "JCVD." I peeled back the skin of the fruit, cut the pulp and then took that very hard seed. In this film I cut that hard seed, and inside that seed was a kind of liquid cream substance of the man I am, or the woman you are.

OK --
It was like being naked--I would love to be naked in front of you.

Well, I --
Not being naked being naked. I say such things in Hong Kong and they thought I was being a crazy Frenchman. Being naked of protection.

So you've no regrets at all?
Believe me--I've done very good stuff and very crazy stuff, and I don't regret the crazy stuff. So are you in New York?

Yes, I am.
And are you 27, or 32?

I'm 22.
Oh, f---. That is very young. Will you come to the premiere?

I don ' t know. When is it?
I don't know. You will wear all black, a black dress and high heels?

Uh --
You can come find me, I will be the one with the very broad shoulders, dark hair and a simple suit. We can have some champagne, you and me.

Props to Newsweek for actually publishing this. Almost every female journalist I know has a story about being harassed while trying to conduct a serious interview with a male source. Van Damme illustrates this phenomenon so perfectly. What a fucking creep.

Beth Schapiro is a nationally recognized expert on political campaign strategy. With over 30 years of experience in the field, she has developed campaign strategies for successful candidates for all levels of office throughout the Southeast. She is particularly proud of her experience helping to elect several government officials who were the first of their race, gender, or sexual orientation to win a particular office.

Beth is President of The Schapiro Group, Inc. Here's Beth...

Queers Without Borders reports that on the transition team's job page, the nondiscrimination page includes gender identity:

"The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law."

The Connecticut Employment Law Blog notes,

It's one thing to raise the issue in a platform. It's quite another to start implementing a change like this almost overnight. And this has significant ramifications for the entire Executive Branch once the new administration starts.

Nice.

Through EngageHer.org and documentary film Engage Her: Getting minority women to lead and vote, founder and CEO Mable Yee is working to get women to the polls -- especially women of color -- millions are registered to vote but don't cast their votes. So why do all those undecideds get so much attention?

Just 10 days to go till the big vote for the next prez. Here's Mable...

I'm sure most of you have seen the news that Sarah Palin has been appearing with "a small group of high-profile feminists," including Oregon NOW Vice President Linda Klinge and former Ms. magazine editor Elaine Lafferty. (More about that later.)

Rather than focusing on who or what is or isn't feminist, let's just step back and look at the policies Palin stands for. Not the talking points or labels. Let's examine what she's actually saying on the stump this week:

Palin went on to suggest Obama discriminated against women employees in his own Senate office, as opposed to GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

"There is a difference between what Barack Obama says and what he does," she declared. "Out on the stump, he talks about things like equal pay for equal work, but according to Senate records, women on his staff get just 83 cents for every dollar that the men get. What is with that? Does he think that the women aren't working as hard? Does he think they're 17 percent less productive?"

"I know one senator who does pay women equal pay," she added, referring to McCain

It's completely fair to call out Barack Obama for not having more women at the highest (and highest-paid) levels of his campaign. I grant that (and have linked to this point before). BUT beyond the anecdote about their campaign staffs, Palin declines to mention that McCain voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, and supports the right of businesses to discriminate on the basis of gender. This has a much greater impact on American women than what he pays his own staff.

Instead, she said if elected she would pursue policies such as flexibility in labor laws so women could engage in more telecommuting and would push for a tax code "that doesn't penalize working families."

"Working mothers need an advocate, and they will have one when this working mother is working for all of you," she said, as the crowd cheered.

...Except that, again, her running mate has supported paid family leave in theory, but not in practice. Obama has pledged to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act, while McCain...

It is no secret that women in the male entertainment industry are often subject to harsh conditions, violence, lack of pay and sometimes murdered. But I think the abuses faced by women that have recently immigrated are harsher, especially when they may not have networks developed yet, they may not understand the legal system or aren't sure who they can turn to or if they are still waiting on papers, oftentimes fear will keep them silent.

Most of the time the women are paid next to nothing, $2 for a dance, $10 for a set and $40 for an hour.

via AP.

The scene plays out in immigrant neighborhoods across New York, providing a key source of employment for immigrant women and a haven for men seeking to stave off the loneliness of being far from home. It is a perfectly legal form of entertainment -- there is no stripping, but plenty of hand-holding.

But some of the women say the clubs have a darker side. They complain about exploitative management, sexual advances from clients and even violence. A dancer was recently shot and killed in Queens, and one of the city's largest dollar-dance venues is now the target of a federal lawsuit.

They have yet to find a gunman for the young woman that was killed. They didn't mention her name in the article. Ultimately, the dancers have been coerced to put up signs saying they are treated fairly, but frankly they don't have much of a choice.

Furthermore, the article discusses how this is an old form of entertainment for lonely men and became popular during the depression. Since the economy is tanking, I wonder if there has been an increase in violence faced by women working in all facets of the male entertainment industry. Finally, suggesting that this is the old form of work, one wonders why dancers aren't treated better, even with benefits and stock options. Sometimes the obvious seems ridiculous because sexism is so ingrained in how we look at exotic dancing.

The National Women's Law Center is hosting a series of webinars (as in, online! you can participate from anywhere!) on how to negotiate for yourself in the workplace:

WORK$MART: Pay Negotiation for Women (Two-Part Series)

Did you know that men are four times more likely to initiate salary
negotiations than women? And that a worker stands to lose more than
$500,000 by age 60 if she fails to negotiate her first salary?

Two-Part Webinar:
1:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008, and
1:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008

Register Now

During these workshops you will learn:
* How to benchmark the salary of your current job;
* How to determine whether or not you are paid fairly; and
* How to negotiate a raise or promotion.

Best part? They're free! Sign up here.

There is a disparity in arrests for sex workers, versus pimps and clients according to a new study, looking at sex work and incarceration in Minnesota. Sex workers reported that they went to jail more often than their pimp did or their clients. Obviously an example of how the burden falls on women's bodies and choices, as opposed to looking at the demand for the product, the potential source of the conditions for sex work.

However, does an increase in policing help these conditions? Or make it worse and push things further underground?

Can sex work be looked at in the same way that drugs are? What would it look like if the legal system went after buyers and users in the same way it does dealers? And I think the role of sexism makes it very very different, but I think the role of race is a key factor in both cases to determine how in fact the criminal justice system treats drug dealers and sex workers.

Thanks to Brad for the link.

I appreciate that Obama has an ad explicitly addressing the impact of the economy on women.

And while you are at it check out Obama's white paper on women and the economy. Also, Firedoglake has more about the impact that the economy is having specifically on women.

So I am actually impressed that this young woman had the foresight to know that our virginity obsessed media would eat up her story of selling her virginity to pay for graduate school. Watch the clip here.

And this clip doesn't disappoint. The battle of conflating women's "empowerment" and feminism with these vapid moments of political opportunism continues. I guess for her selling her virginity is empowering, except that it relies on really sexist ideas of women's sexuality and the myth that there is something special about virginity.

The comments from other people are even better..."she is doing it with a stranger, it should be special!" or "she doesn't look like a virgin...!" It is sad that a supposed respected media source would pick up a story that hinges on making spectacle of women's virginity.

CNN asks, "so if it is true and she has held on to it for so many years, why does we want to part with it now in such a public ways?" She responds that we live in a capitalistic society and she wants to capitalize off of this.

Homegirl knows exactly what she is doing and the media is playing right into it. Yes, America is that retro in its idea of sexuality that someone "losing their virginity for money!!!1!" is newsworthy. Next month when her solo album comes out or her Playboy centerfold, we will know we have been duped!

We've cautioned before that "women voters" are not a monolithic bloc that can be won over with a single message. But as the economic downturn has hit women especially hard, it's easy to see why Barack Obama is trying to appeal to women by discussing the economy -- hitting on the issue of equal pay and highlighting Lilly Ledbetter's story.

Obama was an original co-sponsor of the legislation to reverse the result in Ledbetter's case; McCain opposes the bill because, he said in April, it "opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems." Well, yes, that would be the point of a law prohibiting pay discrimination.

The Obama campaign has asked Clinton to talk about Ledbetter when she campaigns for him. Obama, who didn't focus much on the issue during the primary campaign, hosted a meeting Monday on pay equity; the campaign released a memo contrasting Obama and McCain on women's issues. As I sat down to write this column, an e-mail arrived from the Democratic convention announcing that Ledbetter would be speaking there.

That's all well and good, but it's worth bringing up that it's tough for even the most impassioned campaign rhetoric to connect with real life. This piece from Salon last week, about a middle-class mother who takes her children to a soup kitchen for the first time, drives that point home. She describes her situation this way:

Variety has recently released their 2008 "Women's Impact Report," which profiles influential women in movies, television, music, business and technology. Apparently there are only a handful of influential women of color...ugh.

Hanaa Rifaey doesn't sleep much. I'll let her explain why. But the next time you find yourself pissed at another policy done wrong, know that Hanaa is on it. And you can be, too. Even if it's a small step, it'll add up.

Here's Hanaa...

Great news! For an idea of just how important this legislation is, watch Rep. Barbara Lee:

"The wage gap is most severe for women of color. It's absolutely inexcusable that women, and especially minority women earn a fraction of what men earn from the same job. African-American women earn just 63 cents on the dollar and Latinas earn far worse at 57 cents... The wide disparity begins at the start of a woman's work life and grows wider as women age. In the long-term, combined with the decrease in pension income and social security benefits, which is what happens, many women are at risk of falling into poverty as they get older because this disparity began when they first started working. H.R. 1338 takes immediate steps to close the wage gap for all women by amending and strengthening the Equal Pay Act..."

Bush is sure to veto. But let's savor this little victory.

Related:
Ask your senator to vote for fair pay
Blog for Fair Pay Day: Ask for it!
John McCain supports wage discrimination
Obama on women and work
Women college grads earn less than men
WaPo: Wage gap is "A Bargain At 77 Cents To a Dollar"

Yesterday the House held a hearing on sexual assault in the military, a topic we've written on repeatedly. Not just the insanely and disturbingly high rates of sexual assault, but the effect is has on female vets.

Rep. Louise Slaughter reintroduced the Military Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Act, which would establish an Office of Victims Advocate within the Department of Defense and hopefully improve efforts to respond to cases of sexual violence and harassment in the military.

At the hearing, sexual assault survivor Ingrid Torres testified. What an incredibly brave woman:

"The road after sexual assault is a long and challenging one. As is typical of violent crime, I suffer from PTSD, violent nightmares, and depression. I still wake in the night, he still comes after me in my dreams... Because of the impending courts martial, I was advised not to talk openly about the case, which caused rumors and misconceptions to run rampant. There was no escaping it and no making it better. The hostility grew with my silence...Ultimately, our society still publicly and privately tries the victims in sexual assault cases. Rape is the only crime where the victim has to prove their innocence."

RH Reality Check has more.

In other congressional news, yesterday the House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act. Bush has vowed to veto the legislation. Because he likes making $1 to your 76 cents, dammit.

Judith Warner at The New York Times writes about Congress' new report, "Equality in Job Loss: Women are Increasingly Vulnerable to Layoffs During Recessions," and says,

Women left the workforce when the cost of child care ate up their entire after-tax salaries, or when family-unfriendly workplaces pushed them out. Or when, like women without children or men with and without children, they were laid off in a bad economy.

But these naysaying voices have been largely shouting in the wind. No one has really wanted to hear that the much-vaunted new "choices" weren't really choices at all. No one's been scouring obscure academic journals for the real skinny on women's progress. No one's been too eager to embrace grim facts over more-glorious fictions.

Make sure to check it out...

According to the NYTimes yesterday, women are now being hit as hard as men by a lack of jobs. This is not a new phenomenon but I understand what the article is getting at. It has gotten very competitive for the jobs that remain and an inability to find sustainable work has forced women into alternatives. This is in direct contrast to the idea of the "opt-out" revolution as some have termed it. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women aren't working because there aren't enough jobs.

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home -- to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women's story through the end of 2007.

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

The excuse for men is not usually that they have chosen to stay home, it is that they can't find work, whereas for women the explanation has always been she chose to stay home, not that she couldn't find a job.

For working class families the luxury of a stay at home mom has never been an option. It has in the past been an oversight of the women's movement that women merely want to enter the workforce because they have a right to. It is often that they need to.

Via.

This is just horrid. Via ShAARP Session:

"Whoever thought 20 plus years of experience would be a liability?" questions experienced film reporter Lisa Johnson Mandell in this morning's TODAY show segment on "De-Aging Your Resume."

So what exactly is it that folks should do to downplay years of valuable experience? According to TODAY show contributor Jean Chatzky, "For women, shorten your skirts a little bit. Cover your grays."

Lovely.

via Dana, today Obama appeared in New York with Hillary Clinton, and delivered a speech on women and work. He said:

But let's be clear: these issues - equal pay, work/family balance, childcare - these are by no means just women's issues. When a job doesn't offer family leave, that also hurts men who want to help care for a new baby or an ailing parent. When there's no affordable childcare or afterschool programs, that hurts children who wind up in second rate care, or spending afternoons alone in front of the TV. When women still make just 77 cents for every dollar men make - black and Latina women even less - that doesn't just hurt women, it hurts families who find themselves with less income, and have to work even harder just to get by.

So you'd think solving these problems would be one of our highest national priorities. But while some politicians in Washington make a lot of noise about family values, when it comes to what people actually need to support their families, and care for their families, and spend time with their families - they get awfully quiet, don't they? And year after year, it just gets harder for working parents - especially working women - to make a living while raising their kids.

We take it for granted that women are the backbone of our families, but we too often ignore the fact that women are also the backbone of our middle class. And we won't truly have an economy that puts the needs of the middle class first until we ensure that when it comes to pay and benefits at work, women are treated like the equal partners they are.

Despite his recent missteps on choice, Obama also took the opportunity to restate his support for Roe, but in a fairly general way. He didn't address his statements on late-term abortions. (And speaking of those statements, be sure to check out Lynda Waddington's note to Obama about what he should understand before calling for the removal of mental-health exceptions to abortion bans.) Later today Obama will be in Virginia, talking more about women and the economy.

Meanwhile, McCain's attempting to woo the ladies this week, too, with an event planned for tomorrow. I'm guessing he'll take this opportunity to highlight his support for companies' decisions to discriminate against women and people of color, discuss how he's deeply anti-choice, and throw in a few wife-beating jokes for good measure.

Yet another reason I'm proud to be a New Yorker.

Of the top five women executives in New York State, their businesses consist not of fashion or a perfume line, but of cars, computers, electronics, construction and envelopes.

Hotness.

h/t to MAC.

Betsy Perry has a vacuous rant about flirting in the workplace up over at TheStreet.com that will make your feminist head spin. It’s not only misogynistic (apparently all women talk about is “anorexia, the latest under eye concealer, and J. Sisters bikini wax techniques"), but grossly reinforces traditional definitions of beauty (“The overweight young woman whose bra straps always showed, and who had the unfortunate habit of burping out loud, lasted minutes before being moved quickly to another floor”), and basically suggests that “the male gaze”—that great women’s studies term for feeling watched and judged constantly—is women’s only source of pleasure in their own appearance: “What’s the fun in getting dressed up for work if no one’s around to appreciate the gold-flecked body powder you’ve tossed down your cleavage?”

Ugh. Perry delights in alleging that Bill Clinton touched her breast, relives her good ol' sexual harassment days, and wonders why girls today can't own up to the fact that flirting in the workplace is a great way to get ahead.

What makes all of this so sad is that Perry obviously has some really important stories to tell about what it was like to work in the male-dominated journalism business back in the day. There’s no question she’s been sexually harassed and forced to be a chameleon in order to “get the story.” Why couldn’t she have communicated these critical tidbits without devolving into various forms of unexamined hatred (for self and, well, all women)?

Flirting, in the workplace and elsewhere, is certainly fun, but it isn't a career strategy for men or women. I'd personally like to be known for my intelligence and dedication, not my tits. If I enjoy some consensual flirting in work atmospheres, that's cool, but its not going on my CV.

The ending is really the nail in the coffin: “Not unlike a geisha, leave your flip-flops at the door and step into those Jimmy Choos—a sexy gait is worth a little hamstring ache in the long run, don’t you think?”

Wow, where do I start? Maybe Perry should read up on geisha culture before referencing it willy nilly. On the other hand, I guess the parallel makes some sense. Just as many geisha’s were sold as children to geisha houses, and forced to clean up after other people as their first stage of training, Perry is advocating selling out and putting up with men’s shit in the workplace as a way to get ahead.

Perhaps Perry is our best, newest example of internalized oppression. She’s been made to feel like women suck for so long that she actually believes it. I just wish she could spend a couple of hours with the feministing community to see what she’s been missing.

We don't tend to be all that big business-minded here at feministing, I assume because none of us work in that environment, but we certainly care about how women are faring in the corporate workplace. Jessica Wakeman has a good piece up on Wall Street and the women who struggle there at TheStreet.com. An excerpt:

...the lack of women in the executive suite is still jarring. They may make up 46% of the workforce, but women held only 15.4% of Fortune 500 corporate officer positions in 2007, according to Catalyst, a non-profit that studies women’s advancement in business. That percentage is an increase from 1997, when women only had 10.6% of such positions, but clearly the boardrooms in the U.S. skew mostly male. According to Gail Evans, former executive vice president of CNN (TWC) and author of the book Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman. 'There’s so few women [that] when one of them gets fired [from an executive position], the percentage drops 10 percent.'

Check the whole thing out here.

Image from Catalyst.

Photo of Diane DiMassa by Love Alban

Photo of Cristy C. Road by Amos Mac

Diane DiMassa and Cristy C. Road are contributors of the new anthology, Live Through This. Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev, Live Through This is a collection of original stories, essays, artwork and photography that explore the use of art to survive many of life's lows, traumas and struggles. Both illustrated and contributed real-life personal pieces to the anthology.

Diane DiMassa is best known as the creator of the comic heroine Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. She recently illustrated a graphic novel written by Daphne Gottlieb called Jokes and the Unconscious, and regularly contributes to anthologies.

Cristy C. Road's works and publications include the punk rock zine, Greenzine; illustrated storybook, Indestructable; a series of illustrated novels based on filmmaker Esther Bell's upcoming film, Flaming Heterosexual Female; and is currently working on Bad Habits, an illustrated love story.

Here are Diane and Cristy...

I know this won't come as a shock to all you feminists, but relationships that don't hew to traditional gender roles are more equal.

Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.

While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

We've written a lot about research that shows unequal opposite-sex relationships "can take a toll" -- mostly on women, who are still stuck with the bulk of the housework. So it's understandable that, in a relationship where neither partner is socially "marked" as the one responsible for housework, things would be more equitable on that front.

Beyond the housework example, I thought the article was going to veer into "all women resolve conflict, and all men avoid it, therefore gay couples don't fight" territory. But I was pleasantly surprised. It's more about how couples interact within their relationship -- not necessarily about the gender of the individuals involved. I was relieved to see one of the researchers quoted as saying, "“Like everybody else, I thought this was male behavior and female behavior, but it’s not."

Of course, the overall frame for the article -- that same-sex couples are more equitable and therefore happier -- is a generalization. There are egalitarian hetero relationships. There are queer relationships where gender roles come into play. The take-away lesson should simply be that with more equality -- and with some breathing room from society's expectations for our gender -- we're all a lot happier in relationships.

Huh?

The head of a New York law firm which prides itself as "dedicated to the empowerment of women in the workplace" is being sued for sexual harassment. You just have to love the first line in this article:

A top New York attorney known for representing women in sexual harassment cases is a chauvinist with genital piercings, a lawsuit alleges.

Not just a chauvinist, but with genital piercings. For shame! (Sarcasm included)

A study by Salary.com shows that if women who stayed at home to care for their families were financially compensated, they'd be making almost $117,000 a year.

The eighth annual survey calculated a mom's market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.

This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.

One mother interviewed for the story, Samantha Russell from New Hampshire, said, "The rewards aren't monetary, but it's a reward knowing that they're safe and happy...It's worth it all."

Frankly, I'd prefer the cash.

I used to think these studies (that usually come out around Mother's Day) were cool - they showed that women's work in the informal economy was worth something. But more recently, it almost seems insulting. As if women who contribute at home get a once-a-year chance to brag about how much they're worth - and then it's back to cleaning up socks with no compensation. Am I just jaded?

Many of the people I know (including myself) have found jobs through idealist.org. Have you? It's a pretty great job source for the non-profit sector, and this month they are opening up their site to free job posts.

From Ami Dar, Executive Director:

Here is the story. Posting a job on Idealist usually costs $60 (we are a nonprofit ourselves, and this small fee keeps us afloat) but starting today, and through the end of June, all job postings on Idealist are free for any nonprofit organization.

We are doing this so that any organization can try us at no cost, and our ultimate goal is to bring you every nonprofit job that's open around the country (as well as internships and volunteer opportunities, which are always free).

Judy Norsigian is co-founder of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective and co-author of the ground breaking Our Bodies, Ourselves published in 1970. Since its publication, women's groups around the world have developed cultural adaptations of, or other publications inspired by, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Most recently, women's groups in Albania, Russia, South Korea, and Tibet have produced new publications in book and other formats. Judy is also the co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause and most recently, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth. Check out the Our Bodies, Ourselves blog when you can: http://ourbodiesourblog.org/

Judy speaks and writes frequently on a wide range of women's health concerns, including abortion and contraception, sexually transmitted infections, genetics and reproductive technologies, tobacco and women, women and health care reform, and midwifery advocacy.

Here's Judy...

From a recent performance at The Whitney Biennial. Photo by Eduardo Aparicio.

Coco Fusco is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is the author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas, and editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (with Brian Wallis). Her work on military interrogation was selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

"In the guise of a CIA manual, Coco Fusco's provocative A Field Guide for Female Interrogators offers an unflinching look at women's role in the military and at America's use of torture in the War on Terror"-- (from the book's back cover copy).

Here's Coco...

I added an update to my post on Wednesday about the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- noting that Senate Republicans blocked the bill from passing. John McCain wasn't there for the vote, but he opposed the legislation: (via Scott)

"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," McCain told reporters yesterday. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

To summarize: McCain's not against women and people of color being paid the same as white men for doing the same work -- heck, if businesses want to pay fairly, that's great! -- but he doesn't think we should make businesses do so. And not holding businesses accountable for wage discrimination is the same thing as endorsing it.

In my interview with Lilly Ledbetter, she actually responded to McCain's position on the legislation:

We've had a lot of opposition that said this would just open up a multitude of lawsuits, and it would be tough on corporations to fight these cases. But that's not true. If a person or individual thinks they have a case, they can't even go to EEOC unless they have proof. You can't just waltz into EEOC.

Right. It's not exactly like it was easy for Ledbetter -- and others in her situation -- to prove they were discriminated against. In fact, there are some very high barriers to getting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to recognize your complaint as valid.

So the "I hate lawsuits" defense is bullshit. McCain is really saying that he values the rights of corporations over the rights of women and people of color who work for them. Thanks, buddy.

On Monday I talked to Lilly Ledbetter, a truly awesome woman who sued her employer, Goodyear Tire, for paying her less than her male coworkers for year after year. As you may recall, the Supreme Court ruled last year that, because Ledbetter did not file a complaint within 180 days of her first paycheck. Nevermind that she didn't find out about the pay disparity until nearly 20 years later.

Well, Congress is considering legislation that would undo the damage the Supreme Court has done. The Senate is voting on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at 6pm EDT tonight! So call your Senater now and ask for a YES vote.

Here a taste of my conversation with Lilly:

What do you say to people who claim that the wage gap is not due to discrimination, it's just that women choose lower-paid work and drop out of the work force to raise children?

No! No, no, no, no. I have had my eyes opened up a great deal being involved in this. I filed my charge in 1998; I've been working with this situation since that time. I have correspondence [from people in similar situations] from all over the United States. I was born and reared in Alabama, and I thought this was just a Southern problem. But it's not -- it's a national problem. It doesn't only affect line workers like I was but professional people like doctors and university professors. It's not right, and it's high time for women to be paid equal.

In my case, the money I should have been compensated hurt me, because my retirement was based on what I earned. So that was much lower. I'm like a second-class citizen for the rest of my life. I will never be compensated for my lower wages and my pension, and Social Security wages are much lower, because Goodyear paid me less.

But if I can help support and get this bill passed for others, for all discrimination protection, it'll help our daughters, our granddaughters in the future. And I am so grateful the bill has already passed the House, and I'm hoping it'll pass the Senate.

She told me her 70th birthday was last week, and the best birthday present would be to see this legislation pass.

Here she is on video:

Also check out some Blog for Fair Pay action.

UPDATE: The bill failed to get enough votes for a floor vote. Thanks, Republicans! Doesn't mean the legislation is dead, but it certainly didn't pass tonight.

A UK-wide survey finds that 76 percent of employers said that they would not hire a woman if they knew she were going to become pregnant within six months of starting her employment. More findings:

52 per cent will weigh up the chances of a candidate getting pregnant, taking into account age and whether they have just got married (although asking that direct question to an interviewee is not allowed).

68 per cent of employers would like more rights to quiz candidates about their plans for a family.

Depressing and infuriating. Check out NAPW's Guide to Pregnancy Discrimination in Employment for more information on pregnancy discrimination at work.

Martha Ma is a food and media educator and producer, community chef and health counselor. She is the host and producer of "The Tasty Life," a bi-weekly television show on Manhattan Public Access channel 57, and the editor of the e-newsletter, "Eater's Digest."

Martha is also executive producer of the Food for Thought Film Festival. If you're in the NYC area this weekend, check out the last weekend of the festival at Cooper Union's Wollman Auditorium, 51 Astor Place at Third Ave. Feature films include King Corn, Black Gold, and Life and Debt. Shorts include The Meatrix I, II and II 1/2 and The True Cost of Food.

Here's Martha...

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Supreme Court's decision to limit workers' ability to sue their employers based on gender and other forms of discrimination. This is a big deal because:

• Women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
• African-American women are paid 63 cents for every dollar paid to white men.
• Latinas are paid 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

That's not ok. Luckily Congress is considering legislation that would reverse the effects of the Court's anti-woman decision in Ledbetter, so please take a few minutes and ask your Senators to pass the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Seeking big-picture answers to wage discrimination is important. I am completely aware that women earn less than men for a whole host of systemic reasons. But this is a great opportunity to share some practical tips for women who aren't getting paid what they deserve, and to empower them to act on their own behalf. (Lord knows it's faster than waiting for Congress to help you out.) So I did a little vlogging on the subject:

(I'm not an expert or anything, so please post your own tips in comments. Also, I realize this advice is mostly geared to the 9-to-5 office-type gals among us, but hopefully it'll have some usefulness for those of you who work in other environments, too…)

If you don't want to watch 5 minutes of my "likes" and "ums," what I said is available in convenient bulleted-list form, after the jump…

Tomorrow we'll be participating in Blog for Fair Pay for Women day. You should, too! Head over to the National Women's Law Center to sign up.

Today a friend sent me this article, about how testosterone affects investment bankers and traders, which "could eventually compromise their ability to make rational decisions, as the traders take bigger and bigger risks during so-called 'bubbles.'" (Having read so many junk science articles, I'm skeptical. But here's an interview with the study's author, who seems to support the BBC's portrayal of his research.)

I found it especially interesting because I picked up a copy of Conde Nast Portfolio -- not a magazine I typically read -- in an airport last week, mostly because of the cover:

Given that cover image I was prepared for some piece about how those girly women in their red stiletto mary janes just can't cut it on Wall Street. You know, it's all their estrogen and "emotional intelligence." So imagine my surprise when I opened the magazine and found this:

Sara Fajardo is a staff photographer at the Orlando Sentinel. Her photojournalism journey has taken her to many places, from local places in the States to covering the rise and fall of president Alberto Fujimori in Peru. You can see some of her photos at her website: http://sarafajardo.com/.

She's also the author of a children's nonfiction book, Enrique's Day: From Dawn to Dusk in a Peruvian City.

Here's Sara...

This is vile.

Now that Senator David Vitter is likely to get a pass for this past summer's scandal with having a connection to the "D.C. Madam" prostitution ring, prosecutors are having their day in court with D.C. Madam and 15 other women who worked with her in a pointless , slut-shaming witch hunt.

Prosecutors are making the women recount sexual experiences with their clients, condescendingly poking and prodding into personal and irrelevant details. Prosecutor Catherine Connelly even asked DC Madam:

'Did you specifically discuss what happened when you went in the shower?' the prosecutor wanted to know.

The witness explained, 'I was having sex.'

'What would happen if you were menstruating?' Connelly asked.

Because a lady's bleeding has everything to do with money laundering! For this, women's careers will be ruined; a young naval officer on the stand yesterday was put on leave from the navy after being forced to talk about when she was "aggressive" or "submissive" with a client.

And this is just the beginning. Over 100 other previous sex workers will also be publicly named.

We all know who should really be ashamed here.

From The New York Times: "New Jersey moved another step closer on Monday to becoming the third state in the country to give employees the right to take paid leave to care for a newborn or a sick relative."

For more information on why paid leave for new parents is so important, check out Moms Rising.

Allison Kilkenny describes herself as "a political humorist, a fancy way of saying writer, who makes shitty world news funny." She is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, The Beast, Alternet.org's Wiretap Magazine, and Timothy McSweeney's. Her work has appeared on The Nation and SIRIUS radio.

Here's Allison Kilkenny...

Sexism, racist stereotypes, general assholery - it's all here folks.

Thanks to nursing student Sara for passing this along, who was just as appalled as we were. Regarding the actual story, it looks like the nurses are rightfully pressing charges against the clinic. The Chair of the Nurses Working Committee said, "We feel like ornaments in the skirts. We don't have freedom of movement and can't bend over to tend to patients. We are made to expose our bodies to do our work." Let's hope they get justice.

BBC news reports on Dr Brian McKinstry's recent article in the British Medical Journal where he expresses his concern over the increase of women doctors in the UK.

There are now more women in medical school than men in the UK, and McKinstry finds this alarming, largely because women are taking up more primary care positions rather than becoming surgeons. He says they also tend to go part-time more often.

He proceeds to discuss the "feminisation of primary care," (grrr) and spews off a list of reasons why women in primary care are problematic, like how women with children print fewer publications than men with children, which in part effects the "education, research and development" of the field. Also, women spend more time with patients than male doctors - the horror!

While the doctor acknowledges past inequalities of women entering the medical field, the general tone of the article seemed sexist and holier-than-thou. After his note of women doctors spending more time with patients, he says, "Empathy and communication skills are important, but so are efficiency and the ability to live with risk." I didn't know that spending more time with patients to make sure they're correctly diagnosed and treated was just about the empathy; I would say those are the better doctors, no question. And to turn it into the stereotype of women as caregivers and "good communicators" is a cheap shot.

In the BBC article, Dr Steve Field, chair of the Royal College of GPs, also questioned the selection process when it comes to medical school entry:

"[H]e added that there were concerns over the fact that girls tended to do better in the interview process for medical school at age 18. 'I'm concerned about how we select into medical school as it seems to be more difficult for boys post A-level.' "

So of course something has else rather than competency has to be going on if women are doing better than men in their interviews. Those 18 year old hussies!

All I can say is that I was glad to see a rebuttal of McKinstry's contention; check it out. Do any UK readers with more knowledge want to weigh in on this?

Check out Deborah Siegel and I chatting it up about things like "entitlement," mentoring etc. over at The New York Times blog, Shifting Careers.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, complaints of pregnancy discrimination hiked up by 14% between 2006 and 2007. There has been a 40% increase over the last decade, reports the National Partnership for Women and Families.

The Wall Street Journal suggests that this is party because women are increasingly working later into their pregnancies, including new advocacy being created for pregnant women and women with children.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act can't straight up protect women from being fired or not hired, but if they're singled out based on their pregnancy, they're liable to take action. And unfortunately, the Family and Medical Leave Act poses a problem: while unpaid maternity leave is required, it doesn't doesn't require paid maternity leave. (California and Washington are exceptions.)

Regardless, it's good to see women taking more action on pregnancy discrimination; we're getting closer to accurate numbers on how prevalent it really is in the U.S. and maybe, just maybe, our family-friendly policies will someday get friendlier. Check out MomsRising and the National Advocates for Pregnant Women has a great list of more resources about pregnant women and mother's rights at work.

Deborah Brenner is the author of Women of the Vine and proprietor of Women of the Vine Cellars. While writing the book, Deborah and winemaker, Signe Zoller met and teamed up in 2006 to launch a first-of-its-kind wine company; bottled and produced by Women of the Vine Cellars.

From 2002-2005, Deborah ran her own marketing and public relations firm, SmallFishBigPond, and worked with such companies as Cinecitta Studios of Rome, Quantel, NBC and CNBC. Prior to that, Ms. Brenner spent over 16 years working in the film, television and the post production industries and was involved in four technology startups.

Here's Deborah...

In the wake of Spitzer's resignation there's been a ton of commentary (feminist and otherwise) about prostitution, trafficking, legalization, and a host of other related issues. I've been out of town and haven't found time to write a substantive post on the subject, but I've been reading a lot of interesting things 'round the internet:

First up, check out Nicholas Kristof's column from Sunday's Times: Kristen's story is "a dangerously unrepresentative glimpse of prostitution in America. Those who work with street prostitutes say that what they see daily is pimps who control teenage girls with violence and threats — plus an emotional bond — and then keep every penny the girl is paid."

Amanda forges ahead and opens what we all know can be a huge can o' worms for a sex-positive feminist: "But when degradation and harm are the work itself, struggling over labor standards becomes confusing. ... Which is why I tear my hair out at the people who focus on the exceptions, like Kerry Howley arguing that prostitution is about women who love sex so much they want to make it a career. That sort of argument serves only one purpose—to shame people with serious questions about prostitution into not asking those questions for fear we’ll be labeled as prudes. Well, I’m not taking the bait."

Safe to say Twisty's against decriminalization: "Note that the goal is merely to curb the male appetite for trafficked women. The message? Pay-for-rapists are here to stay! It is unfathomable that human society could exist entirely without a subclass of sex slaves." UPDATE: Twisty has a clarification.

Brad Plumer looks at what happened in Nevada and Sweden when they decriminalized prostitution: "[O]ur currently policies are grotesque, but honestly, I don't know what the ideal alternative is. I'd lean toward legalize-and-regulate as the least-bad option, although the idea of providing generous support for women who want to get out of the sex trade sounds like the best idea on offer. But if Sweden can barely manage it, good luck putting anything like that in place in the United States."

...and dnA has more thoughts on legalization.

The Sex Workers Project says: "To focus solely on the salacious scandal created by Mr. Spitzer’s alleged actions without attention to the realities and needs of sex workers does nothing to provide solutions for sex workers."

Jill takes on conservative John Derbyshire, who actually wrote that: "To a lover of liberty, it’s hard to see why a woman shouldn’t sell her favors if she wants to. Trouble is, weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery to unscrupulous men, and I think there’s a legitimate public interest in not letting that happen." Yeah, you read that right: "weak or dimwitted women."

Jill also points out that there is not an inherent contradiction in being a sex worker and a feminist.

What have y'all been reading/writing about this issue? I'd love to see more links in comments.

A report out of the UK says that women without children are most likely to do unpaid overtime.

Note: I recognize that the headline is misleading - after all, there are not-young women without children! But that's the one the BBC went with. Thoughts?

Miki Fujiwara, aka Urban Envy, is a self-employed visual artist/community activist based in New York City.

Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Miki is known to be one of the original members of the New York Tributary Art Movement. The majority of her work, mostly paintings, has been categorized as "Cultural Surrealism," often said to be in the "tradition of Cynthia Tom and Frida Kahlo."

Urban Envy's works can be seen in local galleries of New York City.

Here's Miki...

Bambi Weavil is founder and CEO of Out Impact, Inc and publisher of its online magazine Out Impact. Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, Bambi spends her days and her nights working to raise money for LGBTQ issues...while also squeezing time to write about pro wrestling and her guilty pleasure, "American Idol."

Here's Bambi...

A resignation letter from Marilyn Mitchell, former state editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

From: mmitchell
Subject: Fuck the glass
Date: February 14, 2008 8:36:31 AM CST
To: to-all

Cc: to-all-LR, to-all-NW

All I wanted to do at this newspaper is to do a good job. I came here because I thought it was a good newspaper. But, it's not. It's a good ole' boys club made up of old white males. Nobody else has a voice. This is a newspaper in which: The city editor can verbally abuse another editor in the presence of the managing editor and nothing is done. The managing editor in a news meeting slugs a potential 1A story as blonde bombshells - a story in which bombs were strapped on two retarded foreign women and sent into a crowd. Male editors are allowed to talk about penis size during news meetings. Editors call Hispanics wetbacks in news meetings Editors are proud to call blacks n-----s in news stories. A city editor gets his feelings hurt over coverage of a story and I'm penalized for it. The managing editor is a bald face liar and the executive editor doesn't give a damn. So to "the glass," I resign effective immediately. Marilyn Mitchell

One of her coworkers, "veteran political reporter" Bill Simmons, responded to Mitchell that editors may have used the n-word, but weren't "proud" of it. He says sometimes the term "wetback" is not used in earnest, but to criticize bigots who might use it sincerely. And then he says, yeah, they made the "blonde bombshells" joke and, they may like to talk about their penises, but boys will be boys. He can't understand what the big deal is.

But Mitchell is really talking about a culture in the newsroom. Sure, the specific instances she names were offensive, but whether or not someone used a certain term (and in what tone, at what time) is somewhat beside the point. Her criticism -- which the "veteran political reporter" completely misses because he's likely part of the exact ol' boys culture she describes -- hinges on the fact that the newsroom is an environment where only white males feel comfortable. That's a hard thing to articulate, even with a few examples.

This really resonates with me because I've worked for daily newspapers, and I really hated the newsroom culture at a few of them. I never had anyone tell me I couldn't take an assignment because I was a woman, or anything overt like that. But I watched certain golden-boy reporters (and they were always boys) continually screw up and require corrections, and yet continually get the plum assignments. There was one particular editor who was best buddies with all the young dudely male reporters, and also a total lech -- with a really gross flirty attitude toward all of the younger women in the newsroom. Once he said, of another reporter who was gay, "Don't you just expect him to click his heels together three times and disappear?" (A nice, subtle Wizard of Oz reference.) Just tells you something that this editor was a "rising star" at the paper.

The point is, go Marilyn. You're not wrong on the merits just because one of the old white guys in the newsroom quibbles with your examples. This sort of thing is about the culture, the big picture. Clearly they just don't get it.

Women at work on bomber, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif. (1942)

Check out this 1943 guide to hiring women, designed for male supervisors on dealing with women working during World War II, published in Transportation Magazine.

My favorites are:

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit but also reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job. Transit companies that follow this practice report a surprising number of women turned down for nervous disorders.

Uh, I’d have a nervous disorder too if applying for an office job included a “special physical examination.� Yikes!

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. Companies that are already using large numbers of women stress the fact that you have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and consequently is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

I do like rest periods, but damn, I use them for peeing and eating, not hair tidying. Especially since I work from home now. Unless sloppy ponytail is considered a style.

Again, thanks to sunshine for sending this to me. Excellent chuckles on this dreary day. Though, it did make me wonder what craziness some employers would come up with today.

(Image from the Library of Congress Flickr stream of photos of women workers during WWII.)

Full list after the jump.

Joan with Javonn, one of the many babies she helped deliver

Joan Bryson became a midwife in 1991, and between her nursing experience and midwifery practice, she's assisted in more than 1,000 births.

At her private practice in Brooklyn, NY--Community Midwifery--she provides midwifery and health care for women in their teens to post menopausal years, including regular gyn exams, breast exams, primary care screening, preconception counseling, STD screening and prevention and family planning.

She is also an active member of New York City midwives. Here's Joan...

According to a recent survey, the wage gap between men and women in the tech industry is growing.

Men are making more money than women in technology jobs, about 12% more than they did last year, according to a salary survey by career site Dice.com.

The survey found that salaries for men increased by 2.4% in 2007 but stayed flat for women. The average salary last year for men was $76,582, and for women, it was $67,507, according to Dice. The gap widened last year: In 2006, the difference between salaries paid to men and women was 9.7%.

The gap was highest for workers in retail, mail order and e-commerce industries - where men make 15 percent more than women. Yikes.

Anyone in the tech industry want to weigh in?

Nearly six months after the House passed its companion measure, the Senate heard testimony for S. 1843, the "Fair Pay Restoration Act," or the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act", reports the ACLU. Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, stated:

"This bill is a modest and logical fix to an ongoing civil rights problem. American workers should know that they are protected from wage discrimination and are able to challenge such discrimination when they discover it. There should be no benefit to employers in keeping pay discrimination hidden."

Let's hope this is soon put to bed.

It is always fun to come across female writers that are surprised by phenomena such as women picking up hammers. They open their eyes and low and behold, women have jobs and pink tool belts.

There has been an explosion of womantargeted self-help books, videos, radio shows (including one called "A Repair to Remember"), TV spots and home-improvement Web sites. Some sites -- including bejane.com and toolgirl.com -- are specifically for women, while others offer female-friendly links and columns. Home Depot has introduced "Do It Herself" clinics for women interested in learning how to use a stud finder; the classes are evidently a success since, as NPR has reported, in some locales the store is becoming known as a hot singles spot. Even schoolgirls are joining the revolution. The Girl Scouts now offer a Ms. Fix-It badge for members eager to learn how to rewire a lamp or fix a leaky toilet, and an outfit called Vermont Work for Women has introduced a summer program called Rosie's (as in Rosie the Riveter) Girls promising "hands on instruction in the skilled trades."

Well, I agree with her that the explosion of self help literature that capitalizes off women's supposed helplessness and thus need to be told she is dumb and useless, unless she does so and so is huge. But instead of a scathing critique on capitalism and the ways it pigeonholes women into predefined roles, she relies on some tired nostalgia of women hitting the ground running in their new found freedom of building shit around the house.

Please tell me you aren't serious.

For activists and organizers that work on issues of displacement, jobs and housing, it is not exactly news that the subprime lending situation has had a malign effect on working class women and women of color in low income communities. They are usually first in line to fall prey to predatory lenders and usually the most viable customers of such loans. According to this morning's NYT women of color in Baltimore have inevitably been the first to be effected by foreclosures.

For each of the last four years, more than half of the foreclosures in this neighborhood have been homes owned primarily by women, according to an analysis of public records by the Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofit community development organization.

The foreclosures threaten the neighborhood’s fragile stability. And they highlight a broader dimension of the housing meltdown: subprime mortgages, which are driving the foreclosure rate, have gone disproportionately to women.

Although this is not surprising, it shouldn't be ignored either. The trend in subprime lenders engaging in predatory lending practices have targeted low income people, making their living off ruining other people's financial lives (and I speaketh from experience). Debt has been normalized in communities of color and working class communities, it is assumed the only way you can live is in debt. The debt we are accruing, we will not pay off in this generation. The damage being done has serious long-term consequences for disenfranchised communities.

Yvette Bello joined Latino Community Services (LCS) in June 2005 and is currently serving as the Executive Director. Based in Hartford, Conn., LCS works to reduce the further spread of HIV/AIDS among the Latino community and other populations at risk, and improve the quality of life of individuals affected by HIV/AIDS.

Yvette also serves on the board of the Medical Interpreting Association of Connecticut, The Ryan White Latino Caucus, the Connecticut Association for Nonprofits board and the Mayor's Commission on AIDS.

Here's Yvette...

Ahem, CNN gets the memo real late. This has been a trend for a long time, women have been choosing careers over relationships, since they were allowed into the world of careers outside the home. Partly because it makes sense and partly because there are much greater social consequences for women in the workplace to have relationships and make families. It only makes sense that for self preservation women would choose to advance themselves in their careers as opposed to potentially hurting it by starting a family.

But a family is not the only reason that women get in romantic relationships. Many women don't want children today and so it just happens they focus on their careers AND they date, when they have time. This only makes a headline when it is about women. It is assumed men choose career over relationships, setting up one of the most fuxored relationship power dynamics of all time.

Furthermore, many women still prefer to be in relationships as opposed to advancing in their careers. More than I would like to admit. Are they evil anti-feminists? Or is this from feminism's bad PR over the last few years?

Sandy Shin is program coordinator at Breakthrough USA. Breakthrough is an international human rights organization that uses media, education and pop culture to promote values of dignity, equality and justice. It has two offices, one in NYC and one in New Delhi, India.

Sandy Shin has a Masters in Human Rights from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies and Sociology from the University of Albany. She was the Legal Advocate Project Director at the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault where she coordinated statewide trainings and provided constituents and the general public with services. Sandy has also been involved with community-driven social movements led by local activists employing anti-racism, anti-war ideologies.

Here's Sandy...

The producer of Superman Returns (of all movies) is being sued by two women for sexual discrimination and harassment.

The most recent case was made by a couple who worked for Jon Peters; when informing Peters of her pregnancy, he recommended she have an abortion or her husband would be fired, in which he was shortly after she refused.

The other pending lawsuit was filed in 2005 when an office assistant claims she was harassed daily and physically threatened by Peters.

What a guy.

Nancy Northup is the President of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global human rights organization that uses constitutional and international law to secure women's reproductive freedom. The Center has won groundbreaking cases before federal and state courts, U.N. committees, and regional human rights bodies, such as the European Court of Human Rights. Working at the state, national, and international levels, the Center has built the legal capacity of women's rights advocates around the world, working in over 45 countries.

Nancy is an attorney with extensive experience in constitutional impact litigation, criminal law, and reproductive rights advocacy. Here's Nancy....

After being described as a stay at home dad, science blogger David Munger, decided to take on whether or not being described as a stay at home dad verse a stay at home dad, hurts ones credibility and reputation in their careers. A question many women have known the answer to for a long time, or simply put, the work women do at home is not a respected part of the capitalist economy. It is invisible, unless you are a wingnut and believe that women belong in the house, and your ideal woman is June Cleaver. So he did a little experiment to prove his hypothesis.

The trick to the study was that readers saw one of four different versions of the story. Jordan was either a "father," a "stay-at-home father," a "mother," or a "stay-at-home mother." Then readers were quizzed on several aspects of the story. Did they have a different attitude towards Jordan depending on gender and "stay-at-home status? Over 1,200 people responded, and this graph shows the most dramatic results:

Guess what?

The Institute for Social and Economic Research has released a study showing that mothers who work outside the home tend to be significantly happier than moms who stay at home.

The Job Satisfaction and Family Happiness survey also found that job satisfaction for women with partners is greater when they work part-time, irrespective of how small or large these jobs are.

It points out that women overall may be working as many hours as men, when the time spent on household tasks like cooking and childcare is taken into account, but a smaller proportion of their time is spent in paid work.

It's not exactly surprising that women who have paid jobs are happier than their unpaid stay-at-home counterparts. But this is the kind of study that just pisses conservatives and anti-feminists off to no end; they'd rather believe that women are pleased as punch to pick up socks and change diapers at home all day. You know, because it comes natural to us. (Though you have to wonder why women would need classes on how to be a good subservient wife if we were so inclined towards the domestic sphere.)

I'm sure this study will bring out the whole "most women want to stay at home but can't afford it" argument. The thing is, I have no doubt that most women (and men) would like more time with their children and more flexible schedules and workplace policies to facilitate that being possible. That's definitely what feminists want. But when it comes women who are stuck at home with no outlets for public productivity, less financial security and--as Amanda points out--less ability to be social--it's not exactly shocking that they would be less satisfied and happy. Thoughts?

Via Broadsheet.

Katori Hall is a playwright, performer and journalist from Memphis, Tennessee. Her award-winning play, "Hoodoo Love" received its world-premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre November 1, 2007. Her other plays include: "Remembrance," "Hurt Village," "Saturday Night/Sunday Morning," "The Mountaintop," and "Freedom Train."

She is a recipient of numerous writing awards including the 2007 Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, 2006 New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting and Screenwriting, 2006 Royal Court Theatre Residency, 2005 Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Recently, she was nominated for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award.

As a journalist, her work has been published in The Boston Globe, Essence, Newsweek and The Commercial Appeal.

These are just some of the highlights of Katori's career. Here's Katori...

Before coming to the Center for Genetics and Society, Emily Galpern worked for 10 years promoting community health and well-being through coalition-building, advocacy, and health education. She holds a BA in women's studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz and obtained her Master's in public health in community health education from San Francisco State University in 2004. She completed a graduate research project on women's sexual and reproductive health in southern Ecuador using a human rights framework, and conducted other research on health disparities and inequities and the impact of racial discrimination on health.

Here's Emily...

Photo by Steed Media Service

In the 1990s, Celeste Beatty traveled Europe, Central America and Africa as an exchange student to study local beer brewing customs after perfecting duplicates of American ales like Samuel Adams. She founded Harlem Brewing Company, the maker of Sugar Hill Golden Ale (delicious, I've tried) in 2000.

Harlem Brewing recently sealed a partnership with the major distributor Manhattan Beer Distributors, which supplies 35 percent of New York City’s market. The deal is helping to get Sugar Hill Golden Ale into bodegas, supermarkets and restaurants around New York City.

A native of North Carolina, Celeste gives 10 percent of her company’s income to charity, usually to jazz organizations. Here's Celeste...

After a Glamour associate editor's implication that being black is a fashion don't, the magazine has issued an apology and is hosting a panel today on "Women, Race & Beauty," which "will explore the culture of beauty, with an emphasis on ethnic hairstyles in corporate America." (via.) They've got some excellent panelists, including Farai Chideya from NPR's News and Notes and Daisy Hernandez of ColorLines. (If someone finds a link to a transcript or video, please post it in comments!)

The Newsday article about the panel also features a slideshow of several professional women talking about their hair, and how they've chosen to wear it. I think this comment, from Keisha Walker, is especially telling:

"It’s obvious that corporate America doesn’t care for natural hairstyles on Black women because you rarely see them wearing them there. People think that when Black women wear natural hair that they are making a political statement. And I find that strange, because I don’t know of any ethnic group where if the women wear their hair naturally, it is associated with politics."

And Ifeanyi Chijindu echoes that:

"Hair is a big issue with black women. We are judged by it all the time When I wore my Angela Davis afro at school, all of a sudden people parted the way. They were treating me like a Black Panther. I could feel this huge sense of fear."

That sounds, interestingly enough, like the Glamour editor's critique:

'No offense,' she sniffed, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go.

Maybe that's a large part of why corporate America treats Afros, braids, and other natural styles as "inappropriate" for the workplace: Because they associate these hairstyles with black empowerment, and with women of color standing up for themselves and for their rights. It goes beyond the superficial racism of "this is a messy fashion don't." It's also about the old boys' (and girls') club feeling threatened by an empowered woman of color.

You have to really laugh when big, corporate, mainstream media shows its true colors through word choice. Reporting on the violent death of four sex workers last year, CNN calls them, "hookers."

That is so retro, clearly they didn't get the memo that it is not appropriate to call sex workers, "hookers," "whores," and other derogatory terms you can think of, especially when reporting on their violent death. It is not the words, as much as the thoughts they provoke that I take issue with. It is a rhetorical issue, if you are trying to show the serious nature of the crimes against these women, calling them a term that has been discussed as demeaning by activists, organizers and sex workers, takes away from being able to recognize that these are women that were violently murdered in an act of woman hate.

via CNN.

Thanks to Matt and Paige for the link.

From left to right: Megan Kocher and Heather Ites

Circa 1970-something, "two women decided to gather some books on women's topics and offer them for sale on the front porch of their living collective," and according to its website, Amazon Bookstore has been around ever since. It remains the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America.

Megan Kocher and Heather Ites help run and own Amazon Bookstore Cooperative. Here's Megan and Heather...

Sister Outsider is the latest project of novelists, screenwriters, and entrepreneurs Elisha Miranda and Sofia Quintero who have been collaborating since 2000. They co-founded the nonprofit Chica Luna Productions and its project, The F-Word, that is working to train the next generation of women of color filmmakers.

Julia Carias is an actor, educator, filmmaker, and Sister Outsider's Director of Operations and Productions.
Among her list of works and activism, Julia co-wrote, produced and directed her first play in 2002, "Roots," a production by La Casa Latina, an organization dedicated to promoting Latino culture throughout the college community.

Here's Julia...

Via columnist Lucy Kellaway in a piece on office politics:

"More women in the workplace means more problems and there is the whole political correctness thing."

Classic.

After graduating high school, Michelle Walker left NYC for the UK to spend years singing in renowned clubs like The Limelight and Ronnie Scott's. After moving to the D.C. area to study voice, she spent graduate school at American University, and continued her jazz studies privately with Madeline Eastman, Jay Clayton, Nancy Marano, Pam Bricker, Dena DeRose, Rhiannon and jazz vocalist Mark Murphy. Michelle also studied at the Amsterdam Music Conservatory in Holland and the Stanford Jazz Summer Workshop in Palo Alto, CA.

Some highlights of her work include opening on tour for jazz vocalists Mark Murphy, Rene Marie, Chris Botti, George Benson, Spyro Gyra, Terrell Stafford and opening for Wynton Marsalis. Michelle currently teaches privately and conducts workshops on musical performance and career management when she's not on stage. Here's Michelle...

This article featured in the New York Times' Fashion and Style section (naturally, like all the other articles on women) features a recent report released by Catalyst, an organization that focuses on women and work. Titled, 'Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don't, " the report delves into the many double standards that women are faced with; you know, you're either "womanly" and passive but incompetent or "like a man" and assertive but a shrewd bitch.

While bringing these stereotypes to light are obviously important, the way in which the message is being executed here sounds more regressive than anything. Their assertion, according to the author, that "women don’t advance as much as men because they don’t act like men," seems to place the blame on women when there are so many more factors that incorporate into gender inequality at work. (Not to mention the whole "men are naturally more aggressive" misconception.)

In another study, for example, angry women in the workplace were deemed less "impressive" while angry men were seen as commendable, but these findings among others should apparently be seen as "nuggets of advice" for women in the workplace:

There are practical nuggets of advice in all this data. Don’t be shy about negotiating. If you blow your stack, explain (or try). 'Some of what we are learning is directly helpful, and tells women that they are acting in ways they might not even be aware of, and that is harming them and they can change,' said Peter Glick, a psychology professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.

While later on, this same professor contends that it's not individuals that are responsible, but others' "perception." So why exactly should it be their responsibility to change when all it does is reinforce the sterotypes they're addressing? I only wonder what "nugget of advice" would be given to the female executive in another study of his whose perceived competence was significantly lowered when she was wearing a low-cut blouse. (Robin Givhan would probably have two cents.)

I find the question of who keeps the house clean a fascinating one. Maybe because I am a total slob and I pretty much don't know anyone my age that is married and stays at home or has the time to do most of the cleaning in the house. But there are couples that do, right? They have kids, they both work and the bulk of housework still falls on the shoulders of women. Obviously, this plays out really different based on your class background or the type of relationship you are in, but consistently, both in my experience, the experience of my peers and others, the majority of house work falls on the shoulders of women. It is the assumed default position, that if it isn't done, than guess who is going to end up doing it.

Well, according to this article from Parenting.com the main reason for this is that we as women really have to stop keeping tabs on who is doing what and just, you know, take one for the team. Oh and don't nag while you are in the process. Kthnx.

Stop nagging, start talking

"When we're tired and stressed out, we don't usually talk to our partners as respectfully as we might otherwise," says Kristen Harrington, a marriage and family therapist in Kingston, New York, and a mom of two. "We women, particularly, get bitter about our husbands' not noticing what needs to be done around the house and start treating them like their IQs are 20 points lower." Men, for their part, seem to tune out their wives when they nag.

Um, maybe we get bitter because we consistently end up doing more work and usually the work that is considered women's labor? I understand this article is assuming, hetero, middle class, married couples that have money for the mortgage. So I want to pull us out of that frame of reference. This sexual division of labor that is instilled in us through the household and then through the media and other forms of socialization trickle into every way that we interact with each other. Who does what jobs at the work place and how is that reflected in their gender? Why are the majority of nurses and teachers women and the majority of doctors and principals men?

Who is expected to do what in the household is extremely political and it isn't just a matter of convenience or someone whining more than the other. It is based on a historical division of labor that is the crux of the nation. Furthermore, when middle class women do not have the time to clean their houses, who do they hire to clean them? So still, today, the majority of house cleaning is done by women and mostly women of color.

The Fawcett Society, a UK-based organization fighting against the wage gap, has named tomorrow Women's No Pay Day, "because the pay gap is the equivalent of men being paid all year and women working for free from October 30th."

In addition to the gender pay gap, women of color in the UK are disproportionately affected:

Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, said: “Every year women are being ripped off by the pay gap and at the current painfully slow rate of progress the pay gap will not be closed in our lifetimes]. It’s worrying that all women face these gaps , [but] that some groups of ethnic minority women face even bigger gaps is outrageous."

To take action, click here.

Maya Nussbaum (right) with author Tayari Jones at the Girls Write Now 10th Anniversary Friendraiser on October 18. Photo taken by Nana Brew-Hammond.

Founded by Maya Nussbaum, Girls Write Now is the only East Coast nonprofit that provides all-girl mentoring and creative writing training for high school girls. Based in New York City, Girls Write Now matches young aspiring female writers with a professional female writer to serve as her mentor and writing coach.

Founder and Executive Director Maya Nussbaum reflects on the past 10 years and why girls need to write. Here's Maya...

For those of you in New York, there's an awesome event tomorrow at the New School featuring the preeminent thinkers on women, work, motherhood, and the so-called "opt-out revolution":

WORKING MOTHERS: WHO'S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)

You've read the articles--and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track--or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence--while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families' needs?

JOIN US as some of the KEY THINKERS and CRITICS of the "opt-out" storyline DISCUSS & DEBATE the real state of working motherhood in America today.

Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, collaborator on Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It.

The panel includes Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It; Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University and author of Get to Work; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and co-author of Hardships in America and The Real Story of Working Families; and Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families and Business and the Nation.

Seriously, it's like the all-star team of work/life issues...

Click here for more info. And if, like me, you can't make it to New York, fear not! They're going to be posting a video of the discussion online.

Let's break this piece up a bit. Reinhard Krafft, head of private banking at Sal Oppenheim jr. & Cie, contends:

'If we service a family, you not only have a patriarch, you have the mother, daughter, son at the table. Whom are you talking to? Whole families.'

Translation: Because all families are hetero, nuclear and patriarchal, of course. The article continues:

Rich women, often widows or heirs, are seen as taking a larger role, but their involvement varies across countries.

And women bankers can sometimes be more perceptive when dealing with couples. 'In some cases what we find ... (that) if you have a couple a male adviser will oftentimes look to the male and have the whole discussion with the male and it could be that the female is the decision maker around this area or it could be even their (her) wealth that we are talking about," Junkans [Dean Junkans, chief investment officer at Wells Fargo's private client services division] said. Typically a female adviser will not make that mistake.'

Translation: Women bankers may make less sexist assumptions than male bankers, but let's just rephrase them as "relationship managers."

Any women in the banking world want to weigh in on this?

Starting at the headline, I knew this was gonna be rich:

Women's Liberation Through Housework

The daring thesis?

Keeping a tidy house needn't be an exercise in pointless, mind-numbing tedium, regardless of what girls of my generation were taught. Many of us for a few decades there refused to admit it, but deep down, we have a perfectly respectable desire to create an attractive, peaceful haven for our families and ourselves.

Those feminists were totally wrong when they said that a life of unpaid housework isn't fulfilling! Rena Corey is soooo fulfilled by cleaning up her toddler's drool and straightening her bathroom towels, she can't understand why any woman would abandon her genetic housecleaning tendencies to work outside the home for a paycheck.

Let it be said that there's some middle ground here. I'm someone who has been known to hang curtains and keep my apartment pretty clean but, uh, I don't exactly feel a special tingle whenever my hand touches the Swiffer pole. I think Rena is missing the point here in treating housework as a sort of higher calling. This part just seems sad to me:

Oh, I don't enjoy the minute-to-minute minutiae of the job, any more than someone in the corporate world enjoys time-wasting meetings or bureaucratic directives. But I like the results -- a refuge for everyone to come home to, with a nice meal on the table and clean linens (well, most of the time) on the beds. My home is my little kingdom where, on a good day, with a lot of organization and a little bit of elbow grease, things run as smoothly and peacefully as I wish the big outside world did.

I admit, that sounds to me like a sad justification. Keeping a "little kingdom" clean might be enough for Rena, but most people don't find that ultimately fulfilling. Which is why Betty Friedan struck a chord in 1963. I don't doubt that there are a few women in this world who feel spasms of ecstasy every time they pick up a Windex bottle. I think my own mother, who quit her job when she got pregnant with me and remains (even though her kids are all grown and moved out) a full-time homemaker, would say that she's very happy with her choice.

But to say that the "second shift" is because of women's genetic predisposition to housework is just absurd. And it lets men off the hook. Rena might be satisfied to spend her adult life as the happy homemaker, but the vast majority of us are not. See, those of us who manage to part with our Swiffers long enough to venture outside for a paycheck know that, as Rena notes, there are indeed minute-to-minute unpleasant tasks in the work world. But they add up to a lot more than a sparkling toilet. They allow women to have influence in the public sphere -- the world beyond the "little kingdom," where important decisions are made about the direction of society, and where money and power change hands.

No matter how many times women like Rena tell themselves they are "renegades" for liking housework, the fact remains that they're taking the path of least resistance with domestic gender roles. That's all well and good if it makes them happy, but Friedan called this a "mystique" for a reason. Most women aren't as happy in this role as they tell themselves they are. As Moe puts it, "There's nothing zen about chapped hands and Brillo pads."

Sol Mills does corporate social responsibility for a living, she works for CSCC. Originally named Cal Safety Compliance Corporation, it pioneered the concept of safety compliance inspections in the California apparel community. The company grew and changed its name to CSCC. Today CSCC provides corporate social responsibility consulting services to a variety of industries around the world, including garments and textiles, home furnishings, hard-lines, technology, cosmetics, toys, food processing, and agriculture.

Just to make sure, the following responses represent only the personal opinions of Ms. Mills and not of CSCC, the company.

Here's Sol...

Drum Major Institute's blog has a good post up by their civil justice fellow Kia Franklin on the Anucha Brown Sanders' victory of her sexual harassment lawsuit against Knicks coach Isiah Thomas.

Ren Jender is a writer/performer who for eight and a half years was the host and founder of The Amazon Slam, a Boston-based all woman poetry slam that won "The Best Poll" of The Boston Phoenix from 1998-2003 and was named "Best of Boston" in Boston Magazine in 1999. Her work has appeared in Bitch Magazine, Bay Windows and Spare Change. She has been profiled in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Boston Metro, The Boston Phoenix, Curve and Teen Voices. She was the co-curator/co-producer of the Lisa King Memorial show in Boston in May of 2006.

She's currently working on a new creative and community project. Here's Ren...

Staceyann Chin is a full-time artist. Writing from her experiences as a Jamaican national and a New York City resident, Staceyann has been an “out poet and political activist� since 1998. She's performed on the stages of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, Off-Broadway and Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. In 1999, Staceyann took the American Amazon Slam title in Aarhus, Denmark.

Her acclaimed individual performances have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and "60 Minutes." Her poems and writings can be found in Stories Surrounding My Coming, and numerous anthologies, including Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons; Poetry Slam; Role Call and Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies.

In 2000, Staceyann's first one-woman show, "Hands Afire" ran for ten weeks at the Bleecker Theater. Off-Broadway Theater welcomed her second show, "UNSPEAKABLE THINGS" in the summer of 2001 before she took it to Copenhagen for a week-long run. London, Helsinki, Sweden and Norway are in line for showings. These are just some of her accomplishments.

She is currently a host on Logo's After Ellen internet show "She Said What?" and a co-host of BETJ's "My Two Cents." She's still creating and sharing. Here's Staceyann...

A recent piece looks into the increase of men entering more traditionally female careers, such as teaching, nursing, etc. While I'd like to think that we've gotten past the point of seeing teaching as just a woman's profession, it's still an interesting discussion to be had. Until, that is, the author asks the question, "Is there such a thing as a reverse glass ceiling for men?"

A featured "expert" ass-hat psychologist Warren Farrell who has written such captivating anti-feminist books titled Why Men Earn More and The Liberated Man says:

"Women enter into those areas because they are the most fulfilling...Men don't because they feel they need to take on the responsibility of providing for the family, and the way they earn love is to earn money." (Emphasis mine)

You know, because women always have the luxury to choose a low-paying career they enjoy since they constantly have a wealthy man they're wired to love.

Their examples of this apparent "reverse glass ceiling" is of a male nurse turned high-level administrator and travel agent John Clifford, who has been featured in Travel & Leisure's "A-List All Stars" and has clients like Georgio Armani yet "feels" like he doesn't get the recognition and respect he deserves within the female-dominated field. (A-List All Stars is small potatoes, I suppose.) And no mention of discrimination regarding a pay gap or a promotion in his work, just his contention that:

"Just as women in the corporate world may feel it is hard to break into the old boys' club. Whether or not we like to say a 'women's club' exists, it does. It's just as hard for a man to break through that." (Emphasis mine)

Which is just laughable. In fact, it sounds like these men are doing just fine in their endeavors. What kind of "reverse glass ceiling" is this exactly? We could be having much more productive conversations about male gender roles and the difficulties men in traditionally female careers may experience. But putting the blame on us money- and power-hungry women is hardly helpful, especially when you don't even seem to know what the term "glass ceiling" actually means.

Feoshia Henderson is a former reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer. Before the Enquirer she covered the Kentucky Legislature and Kentucky politics for The Kentucky Post and The Kentucky Gazette.

She is currently a freelance journalist and blogs about social issues on her Myspace page. Feoshia describes her blog, Femblog, and her blog identity, Femblogger, as:

“I’m a frustrated political reporter looking for people who care about themselves and the world and are looking for a place to talk about it. I blog every day and you’ll find stories here that you usually won’t hear about anywhere else. I’m working to create an e-community of people who vote, who pay attention and who have something to say to politicians. Come by MySpace anytime! If you like it, then friend me. Here you’ll read about politics, social trends, technology, free speech, mass media, women’s health, sex, gender issues, relationships and more!�

Here’s Feoshia…